This is a letter I received from an important mystic in the USA who has occasional contact with spirits from the future. Most mystics try to reach spirits from the past, usually deceased. But there is another, not so widely known group of mystics that specialize in reaching spirits from the future who have not yet emerged as humans.
The message I obtained is from one million souls waiting to be born in the state of Bangladesh in the year 2100. The mystic that sent me this came across this message in her constant searching for contact with future spirits. She wrote down what came to her and sent it to me.
Remember that these communications do not really involve a language and the mystic senses what the future soul is thinking and tries to express this in a human language. Anyone interested in these mysteries can do no better than to begin by reading William Wordsworth's poem “Intimations on Immortality.” The American mystic incidentally is a descendant of Wordsworth. The message is as follows:
We address this message to our great great grandparents and our great grandparents who are alive today, the beginning of 2023. Our million souls will become your great great grandchildren and your great grandchildren when we are born in 2100. We will inherit the nation you are building. We want to share with you our thoughts.
We beg you, the leaders of Bangladesh, to read and think carefully of what we have sent to you with much love. Because of the way that souls are formed and held ready to be linked with babies being born, we do not know which of us will be attached to which of you. But we know that we will be Bangladeshis.
We have three points to make in order of importance based on what we have been taught and observed.
Nutrition
First, we ask, rather beg you, to put more resources into nutrition from the time of pregnancy to when a child is five years old. There is a lot of effort in improving nutrition but not enough. We want our great grandmothers to have proper nutrition to ensure that we also will be raised with proper nutrition.
As you know the quality of early childhood nutrition for both child and mother is an important determinant of the child's IQ. We want to be smart! Some say the difference between South Asia and East Asia is that the latter have an average IQ 10 points higher than the former. You really need to overcome this gap by the time we are born.
To have a Smart Bangladesh much more effort is needed to improve nutrition in the early years 0-4. Focusing on us when we enter school is easier, but it is too late!
Early childhood education
The second action that is very important for us is programs of early childhood education. Early childhood means 0-4 years with 0-3 years most important. Starting at 4 years misses the most critical time period.
The evidence is very strong that in the early years the brain is developing biologically; this period is when interaction with adults particularly in language is critical. The energy used by the child's brain is high, requiring sufficient nutrients. Just as in Artificial Intelligence programs that need to be fed on vast amounts of data, so too does the developing brain need large amounts of verbal interaction between the child and the adult.
Hard brain activity requires energy -- a person running an Iron Man requires 5,000-8,000 extra calories during the 14 hours of the event; a chess grandmaster in a difficult game lasting many hours requires 5,000-6,000 extra calories. Brains require energy. Adequate nutrition is an essential element of early childhood education.
Studies of verbal interaction suggest that the words heard by the child over the first three years, comparing the child in an upper socio-economic family and a family living in poverty is 30 million.
Early childhood education requires a teacher. The teacher may work with a family only an hour a week guiding the parents as to what to do. But the teaching is virtually continuous. One important approach is to read to the child. The child will love to hear the book over and over again. Of course, not all mothers are literate and able to do so.
One can imagine solutions to this: When a woman becomes pregnant and attends a clinic for care and support, the clinic can direct her to go for a few days of training to build up her reading skills.
In the United States there is a Dolly Parton Imagination Library that provides a book a month to a low income family of a new child for five years. The child then has a 60 book library and likes to read. Such a program could be instituted in Bangladesh. High school children can read to the very young child; within a village it is possible to make such connections. Everyone works to help the young child develop.
We urge that Bangladesh's leaders start a real early childhood education program to help the development of our brains. It is far and away the most important thing that you can do to help these million souls growing up smart and able to manage the complex world of 2100. Start now and the program will grow in quality and impact.
We suggest three books that lay out these issues very well. First is James Heckman: Giving Kids a Fair Chance. This book sets results of many studies in the United States that demonstrate that this early childhood education provides higher returns to the economy than programs that start at older ages. Two books by Dana Suskind, Parent Nation and Thirty Million Words, of the evidence from experiments with children and the scientific studies.
Education system
The third important action you can take is to improve the education system. This is really important. We want our great great grandparents, our great grandparents, our grandparents and our parents to be well educated. That will help us to be well educated too. It takes a long time to build a good education system, so please keep pushing for this.
But it is important to focus on what really works. What works is good teachers. Good teachers are those dedicated to their students. Who understand that they are the builders of a nation.
We think that the quality of the teacher is the most important part of the education system. To get good teachers you have to pay them much more than at present. You as our leaders should realize that the teachers are more important than the civil servants, the police, or the military.
Somehow you need to adjust the compensation and insure that the teachers are very well compensated. All over the world we hear that people talk about better education systems but then it turns out that most are not ready to pay what is needed to have such.
Look around, it is not the politicians, nor the soldiers, nor the civil servants, nor the entrepreneurs that determine the future. It is the teachers. Any society that manages to direct its smartest and most driven citizens to become teachers will be the strongest.
If one does not support the teachers above others the result is what you have achieved in Bangladesh today: The richest 10% of the families give their children a good education while the other children of the 90% with lower incomes are neglected. Pay the teachers more than the civil servants and the soldiers and see the system transform.
There is one potential that can transform the education system, the better use of IT facilities. Currently the integration of IT lectures, videos, and reading material is very limited. Much more can be done. Teachers can learn to use these materials in their lessons providing rich offerings of supplementary materials.
But the teacher remains the key to ensuring that we million souls will be well educated. Good teachers will overcome the other hurdles.
We are so pleased with the emphasis on a Smart Bangladesh. But success can only be achieved by building on the biological development of our brains and that rests on nutrition and early, very early childhood education. Please start early if you want good results.
Forrest Cookson is an economist who has served as the first president of AmCham and has been a consultant for the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.