Reviews
David Loye
Ever since Jesus, people with what has seemed too simple, but is actually a profoundly on-target view, have been trying to tell us the key to the better life lies in how we treat our children.
Pestalozzi tried in the 1700 and 1800s. Montessori and Piaget again in the 1900s. Now history — or better still, evolution — has come up with a fascinating successor for the 21st century. Raffi, who brought us "Baby Beluga" and award-winning recordings and family concerts spanning thirty years.
Long probably the world's single most beloved children's entertainer, Raffi is now Raffi Cavoukian, founder of the eternally revolutionary concept of Child Honouring.
As the book title Child Honouring: How to Turn This World Around (Raffi Cavoukian, Sharna Olfman, ed.) makes evident, this is no light-weight, feel-good idea cooked up out of blindly optimistic New Agism. Today we honour Freud as the heavy-weight founder of psychoanalysis, or Marconi as the founder of radio. In the contemporary deep thinkers that Cavoukian and Olfman pulled together for this book—and particularly in Raffi's own introduction and closing essay—it becomes clear that in the concept of Child Honouring as he's developing it, Raffi Cavoukian is becoming a new founder of urgent global importance.
Chapters by leading thinkers in the fields of psychology, education, economics, business, governance, and religion — for example, Fritjof Capra, Riane Eisler, Matthew Fox, and David Korten — flesh out the concept in the body of the book. These chapters have the impact one expects from such deeply and well-grounded folk. But I am particularly impressed with Raffi's own contributions in the introduction and closing.
This is a man who has thought through the challenge facing us with the rare kind of vision and grounded practicality needed if we are ever to move beyond lip service to Jesus, Pestalozzi, Montessori and Piaget.
Here's a quick list of the Child Honouring principles he develops in the introduction to reverse "the deterioration of natural and human communities, thus brightening the outlook for our children and the world we share." Respectful love. Diversity. Caring community. Conscious parenting. Emotional intelligence. Nonviolence. Safe environments. Sustainability. Ethical commerce.
It is in his closing essay, "Onward! Making a Vow: Living the Covenant," however, that Raffi surpasses himself. In nine and a half pages here he literally explodes with inspiring capsule reports on what some wellknown movers and shakers of our time are doing and his own fresh ideas to advance the Child Honouring revolution.
In these very dark days for all of us who have worked so hard for so much of our lives to make things better, this book is a welcome fresh breeze.
It's only in hardback so far — and well worth buying. But with the need of the world for the message it trumpets so effectively, I look forward to the paperback that will more rapidly spread its "original blessing."