Who is the “educator”? How should he be prepared, and how should he interact with children and parents?
– In the regular sense of the word, an educator is one who instructs. Meaning, there are clear instructions and he is in charge of making sure that they are observed to the letter.
However, in our case, we are giving children an upbringing. This means that we do the opposite: We give a person a chance to find everything out on his own, to attain, touch, smell, and taste everything, and then to reach his own conclusion independently. This is what the educator does.
– Even if he’s just 3 years older than the child he is working with?
– It doesn’t matter. He raises him, he helps him take on a different image, rather than merely carrying out instructions. An instructor is a rigid, military notion, so to say, whereas an educator is a more flexible notion.