Japanese Edition of the Book		Kiyoko Oka The Translator		Takashi Sugiyama The Publisher

I would like to announce that Fascinating Womanhood has just been published in the Japanese language. The translator, Kiyoko Oka of Japan, first heard about the book when she was visiting friends in Europe in 1997. She wrote to me about the availability of the book in Japan and a correspondence ensued which led to its publication. Kiyoko is a loyal supporter of the Fascinating Womanhood principles, which is a tremendous advantage in assuring a correct translation.

When Kiyoko first contacted me I asked her to help me find a publisher in Japan. It just so happened, fortunately for us, that Kiyoko had some experience in translating from English to Japanese, and her husband had a long time friend who is a publisher, Mr. Takashi Sugiyama, pictured above. His publishing company is Cosmos 21. Mr. Sugiyama negotiated a contract with me and is enthusiastic about the future of Fascinating Womanhood in Japan. The above photo of Kiyoko was taken in Copenhagen, Denmark.

And so you see, my friends, that women are the same everywhere. We have the same needs and feelings. We all want to be loved with a tender devotion, and we all feel a sacred duty to be good wives and mothers and create happy marriages and happy homes. And you will also see that Fascinating Womanhood is continuing to spread to far distant places and will continue to spread until it reaches the entire world because it is founded on correct principles of everlasting truth.

Message for the Month

This is the beginning of a new year, a good time to focus on our priorities. In my opinion, our top priority should be our marriage, then our children and their welfare. I say marriage should come first because a happy marriage is the foundation of a happy home. When you put them together, marriage and the family, you have a career of infinite importance. There is nothing in this world more important than the work in the home - nothing. And there is no greater failure than to fail in the home. So, let us take this sacred responsibility seriously and give it the priority it deserves.

The Education of our Children

The rest of my message has to do with the education of our children. Whether your children attend public school or home school, you should be involved in their education. This advice applies to both fathers and mothers. You cannot turn your back on this all consuming part of their lives, its just too important, particularly in these troublesome times.

Several years ago a friend decided to write his dissertation on "home school." To provide resource material he asked his wife if she would consider taking their ten children out of public school and teaching them at home. The loyal and cooperative wife honored her husband's request and did so. The result was a very interesting study - all positive, and which I was given a copy of. There is one thing in this thesis that stands out in my mind. It referred to a study made earlier of the most notable geniuses who have lived during the past 200 years, not including those now living. I read about those referred to carefully, and it was most interesting to me to note that in each case in the early life of these geniuses, their fathers were involved in their education. They were either taught by their fathers, or their education was supervised by their fathers.

I suggest you read this paragraph to your husband. It is not always possible for a man to take full responsibility to educate his children, but when he realizes the great importance of his input, he could give a great deal of time and attention to this important part of his children's lives.

When children are taught at home, it usually falls to the mother to do it. Most mothers look at this as something totally beyond their capacity. And it may be if you are not willing to make some major changes. You would have to quit your job and trim life down to the most basic routine. But, in most cases, it would be well worth it.

Before I go further I would like to tell you about my own education. From kindergarten through my junior year of high school I attended public school. I loved school!! Every morning as we assembled in our class room our teacher would open the narrow tall windows and let fresh air in the top and bottom, explaining how important it is to have good circulation of fresh air. Then we all rose for the flag salute, sang all four verses of America and the teacher offered a prayer.

There was a good spirit in the schools. With the exception of an occasional spit ball, passing of notes and a few giggles, the students were well behaved. I respected my teachers and they were worthy of my respect. They were excellent role models. There was system, order and discipline in the schools, discipline which was not too severe but was carried through with consistency.

Then, in the 1960s prayer was taken out of the schools. I sorrowfully watched the gradual decline. A bad spirit entered the schools. My children began to hate school. "There is a bad spirit there," they said. One of my sons in high school begged to quit and educate himself. I checked into matters and was completely frustrated with how to accomplish this legally. So he endured but never attended his high school graduation.

The tragedy is that they have gradually become worse. Even in a little country town where two of my children live, they say you cannot even walk through the high school without sensing a bad spirit. Schools have also become dangerous, with guns and knives a part of it. We can no longer turn aside from this treacherous situation. We must face it.

I want to tell you of my one and only personal experience with home school. My senior year of high school I skipped my school year and instead finished by correspondence courses. I took algebra, geometry and US government. It was the most valuable year of my education. I learned to concentrate and learned to take full responsibility for learning. No one helped me. I had to figure it all out by myself. I am not necessarily recommending this full load for a young person, but I suggest you let the child take as much responsibility for himself as he can. And let your older children help the younger ones.

There are many things wrong with public education. I urge you to think about these things. And to further encourage you to take this step I would like to add the following material I have received from Lydia Sherman, a Fascinating Womanhood teacher who first alerted me to the urgency of home school.

Home School - By Lydia Sherman

My concern about public school began when my first child entered the fourth grade. His change in personality was alarming. He was under pressure to complete assignments, often frustrated and angry, not interested in God as he once was. I used to ask him, "Have you learned about the composer Beethoven, or the poet Longfellow? Do you read Shakespeare and do you diagram sentences? What about character training?" I was disappointed that my brilliant son was uneducated.

My daughter Lillibeth was only six and protested each day of school, begging to be home schooled. "You could teach me, mother," she said. She complained that school was noisy, there were not doors on the lavatories, no toilet paper and the kids weren't allowed to socialize. She cried daily and told her teacher she missed her baby brother. My heart was particularly pricked when I drove both my son and daughter to school one day and their baby brother said, "Where are sissy and Billy going?" It suddenly seemed so alien to drop them off at an institution and raise their younger brother by himself, with no one to socialize with in the day.

The schools had an agenda for our children that was subtly being fulfilled: Alienate them from their families and eventually reject parental authority. According to Sam Blumenfeld, author of "Is Public Education Necessary?" at the turn of the century every American could read and write and Americans were the most literate people in the world. "All of this," he says, "was achieved without public education. Taught mostly at home, no huge institution was needed to educate the child. It doesn't take a brilliant scholar to teach 26 letters and 44 sounds, yet our educators claim our children must be taught by professionals." The author, Sam Blumenfeld, advocates abandoning public education, getting into home schools and letting corporations provide higher education.

What parents don't know is that public education's goal is to "dumb down" the public and create a welfare society or a socialistic nation. They no longer teach our children about our great republic; they teach instead how "evil" George Washington and Christopher Columbus were.

Putting all the political things aside, one must see that this is not the "only" reason to home school. For, what if the schools became "good" again. Should we send our children? Certainly not. It is not normal for children to learn in "herds," eat in "herds" and play in "herds." The family is tailor-made for the child. It contains multi-age groups to communicate with. Once in school, a child identifies with his own age group, creating a special "culture" and even language. At home the child learns about "real life;" the real world - going with mom to the bank, the post office, grocery store, visiting friends, cleaning house, etc. He cannot relate to the "real world" locked up in a classroom all day. Girls and boys develop crushes on each other in schools, causing an upheaval in their emotions.

There was a family here that was having the usual trouble with their children - uncooperative, sullen, rebellious, haughty spirit, worldly (wanting to follow current trends in dress, music, activities and even blow-ups.) She, the mom, took them out of school and tried to home school them. Friends, neighbors and relatives tried to intimidate this methods by suggestions that schools provided better science and math courses. They always reported excitedly the latest school projects in these subjects.

The mom became discouraged and called me. I suggested she abandon the curriculum and spend a year developing a bonding with her children. She spent the first year taking her children on walks, cooking, cleaning house, developing good habits. Now they use curriculums because the mother has got their cooperation. The boy, only eleven or twelve, goes to work two or three times a week with his dad at a dairy. The girl works for young, tired mothers with small children in the neighborhood. She cleans and helps in their homes, an example of how home training can be an enterprise.

The more people we hire to raise our kids, the less respect they will have for our authority. Think of it: Daily they have a bus driver, principle, teachers, coach and on and on. Do you remember how Ann Sullivan got Helen Keller's respect? She isolated her in a cabin so that she had to obey and learn or she could not eat or drink. That child ended up loving "Teacher" because "Teacher" disciplined her.

So, bring your kids home from school and get them away from influences outside the home. We become bonded to those we spend the most time with. If you love life, you won't be confined at home that much in home schooling. You'll be looking at the world, attending classical concerts, jazz festivals, art shows, music lessons, antiquing, decorating and gardening.

Be careful with curriculum. It is only a tool. Magazines and books advocate going to all sorts of trouble and expense. Keep it simple. Reading and writing and character training are important. "School" in Greek is "schule" meaning "spare time." Greeks would go to listen to philosophers and scientists and mathematicians in their spare time. So don't feel guilty if you don't do "school" all day - your kids are still learning. Just because kids sit in a class room all day doesn't mean their learning or remembering.

One other thing you should know about public schools. The educators use a lot of experimental psychology on our children. They believe religious children are mentally "off" and try to re-program them in classes called "talented and gifted," "Quest" and other names. My son-in-law accidentally set a field on fire, in The Dalles, Oregon when he was young and they ask him lewd and embarrassing questions about him and his parents. About the same time in Texas my daughter burned the trash out on the ranch and a little piece of paper flew out and caught the field on fire. We managed to put it out but she was merely frightened. She was home schooled. That shows you the difference between two philosophies - public school and families.

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