Child Honouring: How to Turn This World Around - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0986644609 ISBN 13: 9780986644603

Publisher: Homeland Press, 2010

Synopsis

Sharna Olfman joins Raffi Cavoukian to introduce his original philosophy, Child Honoring-a compassionate revolution in values, a children-first approach to global restoration. This remarkable anthology outlines the unprecedented threats to life at this defining moment in history, and offers a novel and systemic remedy for societal transformation based on honoring our youngest and most valuable players. Contributors from across many disciplines include renowned child development author Penelope Leach, Nobel Prize nominee Lloyd Axworthy, celebrated cultural historian Riane Eisler, bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver, and ecological economist Ron Colman. Child Honoring is a corrective lens that, once we look through it, allows us to question everything from the way we measure economic progress to our stewardship of the planet; from our physical treatment of children to the corporate impact on their minds and bodies; from factory schooling to rampant consumerism. It offers a proactive developmental approach to creating healthy and sustainable societies. As a creed that crosses all faiths and cultures, Child Honoring is a unifying idea: a central organizing principle for a culture of peace. This book will inspire thought-and provoke action-by all who read it.

About this title

About the Author:

RAFFI CAVOUKIAN, C.M., O.B.C., D.Mus, D.Litt, the founder of Child Honoring, is best known as Raffi, award-winning songwriter, recording artist, ecology advocate, and author. A recipient of the Order of Canada and of the UN's Earth Achievement Award, Raffi is president of Troubadour Music, and a member of the Council on Human Development. He lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada.;SHARNA OLFMAN, Ph.D., is Professor of Clinical and Developmental Psychology at Point Park University, the founding director of the Childhood and Society symposium, and Series Editor of the Childhood in America book series with Praeger Publishers. Her Praeger books include No Child Left Different (2006), Childhood Lost (2005) and All Work and No Play (2003). Olfman is a member of the Council on Human Development and a partner in the Alliance for Childhood.

Review:

This thought-provoking book addresses many of today's societal problems and outlines the author's children-first plan for a more sustainable world. --Parent & Child

How often do you come across a book that might actually change the world for a better?... Read it, believe it, and pass on the message! --Jane Healy, Ph.D., author of Your Child's Growing Mind

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 Honoring. As the book title Child Honoring: 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 honor 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 Honoring 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 Honoring 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 Honoring 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. --David Loye, Founder of the Darwin Project Council, author of Darwin's Lost Theory of Love, former Book Review Editor, World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution

About this edition

• Publisher: Homeland Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0986644609
• ISBN 13: 9780986644603
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312
• Editor: Raffi Cavoukian, Sharna Olfman