Flirt Coach Article - Cr*p Education and how to improve it

Cr*p Education - what's wrong with the way we're taught and how to improve it

What is crap education?

I want to know why after years studying physics and chemistry all I can remember is what a rheostat does [dimmer switch technology] and how to change a plug.. oh yes, I also remember that Na = sodium and that sulphuric acid really burns!

I sat for years in a geography class listening to Miss Church droning on about the products and flora/fauna of faraway lands.. whilst being forced to take down all she said using a dip in pen and an inkwell.. no biros! I remember that Hawick produces wool, and that was only because her Scottish pronunciation of the word was so striking.

I spent years creating great masterpieces of essays only to find I had been downgraded because of crossings out and inkblots. A fine way to encourage a budding author.

I was forced to memorise useless facts and wear a uniform that included lisle stockings, a boater hat and flannel knickers with a pocket for my hanky. When I individualised my clothing I was called a rebel. I worked beside people who were labelled as dumb because their academic abilities weren’t up to scratch.. and yet I have seen these same people go on to make great successes of their own lives, not because of but in spite of this so called privileged education.

This is what I call crap education.. and believe it or not, parents paid good money to subject their kids to this rubbish.

Clever = good memory = academic brilliance = crap education!

I was very ‘clever’ in school [that means I could REMEMBER FACTS] and they had high hopes of me filling their expected quota of Oxbridge students. I wanted to study psychology and they laughed at me. Why? Well, I represented the school’s worst nightmare. On one hand I was a potentially great academic star for their portfolio but I did the minimum amount of work to get by [my reports often read A minus, can do better!]. On the other hand I was the ringleader of a group who smoked, played truant to sell and make wire jewellery in Russell Square, ran away from the games pitch, drank in the pub underage and turned the school uniform into something resembling St Trinians – we won’t talk about the drawing of graffiti in the underground and we certainly won’t talk about the hideous practical jokes we played on teachers and other girls. For this I was labelled a rebel.

Discover what 'bad' behaviours mean. Reframe to the positive!

What if the school had looked at me for who I was.. instead of labelling me A- can do better, they could have praised me for my good results.. Instead of labelling me a rebel troublemaker, they could have focused on my individuality and my potential for leadership and entertainment. Instead of dowmarking me for inkblots they should have seen through them to my eloquent words and nurtured me as a great writer… They didn’t. They failed me miserably. I a lucky, I found a way to turn it round thanks to the many self growth programmes I have taken. Many people don’t!

So, Johnny what did you learn in school today…? How many of you have asked that question of your children and how many have been asked that themselves… How many of us can reply, we learnt to be nice to each other or we learnt that together we are strong or we learnt that it is everyone's basic right to have food shelter and education [we’ll come to what kind of education later!!] Not a lot of us, I suspect!

Facts versus values and beliefs = crap education

Schools spend far too much time teaching kids facts, history dates, chemistry symbols etc… This is crap education promoted and encouraged by generations of governments and compliant voters. Schools place far too much importance on academic achievement. Parents, many of them ignorant themselves of what makes up good education, berate their kids for not passing exams and encourage them to swot, memorising fact after fact. Some parents remember their own awful experiences at school and conspire with their kids to play truant. Other parents despair because little Johnny likes to play football instead of studying yet when he tells them of his dreams to be another David Beckham they dash his hopes with tales of how so few succeed in a competitive world and advise him to buckle down and work for his exams - he might get a decent job with a pension in local government or a bank! And most of the kids who don’t succeed academically, are discarded as no-hopers. OK, I know that things are changing, but is it radical enough or soon enough.. and how many people are aware of the desperate need for compete revision of the current education system.

What else is there?

It’s time for an alternative curriculum. Facts about anything and everything are freely available in libraries and more so now on the internet. Kids can find out about anything that interests them if they are encourage do so. Learning that Hitler is an evil man in history is not useful. Being encouraged to discover that Hitler was helpless without all the people and governments who accepted and supported him in his philosophy, is far more useful..

Caitlin Moran, the prodigy child author who produced her first best seller at age 17 was removed from the formal education system by her parents. Caitlin came from a large, not terribly rich, Irish family. Caitlin’s blessing was that her parents had radical ideas about education. They filled the house with books and encouraged their children to discover for themselves, allowing them to develop their own natural talents.

Caitlin became an author, another sister became an expert on dinosaurs.. each child found that special something inside.

I was talking to a cab driver the other day who was worried about his daughter not performing at school I asked him what she was good at.. he said, she likes to draw. By the end of the journey, he said to me ‘You know you’ve made me think. I ought to spend some time finding out what my daughter loves doing and what she’s good at and encourage her in that’. I smiled at the thought of having made a difference somewhere…How many other parents are convinced their children will fail because they don’t rank high up in the academic achievement list.

How many schools, like mine, encourage people to go on to further education in the form of teachers training, because it is better than no further education and a second best for those that failed to get to university… I dread to think how many teachers out there are the product of the ‘well I studied for it, might as well use it’ syndrome. I spent 10 years working as a secretary because I took a course ‘as a back up’, when I dropped out of University… I didn’t get to study psychology, didn’t try the Oxbridge exams [much despair an hair wringing on the part of my teachers]..and I discovered that the study of English literature was not for me! I was a lousy secretary and I suspect some of those teachers are just as lousy. Whatever job you do it is vital that you are doing your lifework.. what is you.. and if you aren’t, you will feel the sense of being off kilter… many of us live with that for the rest of our lives.. how sad! But it’s not too late for our kids..

So, I’m promoting the development of a blueprint for a radical new curriculum.. it excludes all factual learning and it was inspired by Neale Donald Walsh’s Conversations with God, Book 2 and the work I have been doing with Joseph Riggio around realising your personal myth and living from the space of who you are, completely.

A radical new curriculum - can we do it?

Walsh asks these questions some of which I have modified and added comments to– you may want to consider them carefully?

Why do you spank children the moment they exit from the womb, wrapping them in blankets and keeping them from their mothers? Is this really the only way to get them to breathe.. I think not! And why do they need to be cleaned up in preference to being placed on their mother’s belly while still attached… Why do women give birth upside down, against nature…and gravity.

Why do you allow some of your child’s earliest images to be exposure to violence..? The media is a powerful, influential, distorted and addictive force and yet we allow it to baby-sit our kids.. If you were interviewing a nanny for this job and she told you her favourite books were murder mysteries and that her hobby was talking about death and violence, and that when her friends came round you could expect them to indulge in fist fights and stabbings…would you employ her.. I think not! Yet you give the TV [purveyor of violence, crime, greed and anger] pride of place in your children’s education!

Why do you teach children to be ashamed of their bodies and their nakedness. As a child my parents were naturally naked around the house and I never remember my father covering himself in shame. Consequently I never had the experience of shock and horror at seeing a penis for the first time. Why do you think children spend time in the playground exploring each other, maybe its because they’ve never seen another naked body.. who knows…Why do we teach children not to touch themselves and make them afraid of giving themselves pleasure.. What awful messages of shame are we passing on?

Why don’t you teach children about movement and music and the joy of art and the mystery of fairy tales and the wonder of life?

Why do you put kids in schools where competition is encouraged and there is an interminable race to be best be first and slower than average pace is barely tolerated.

Why don’t schools teach kids about dyslexic people who have become great artists, like the guy who carved detailed figures out of toothpicks, barely visible to the naked eye.. And how did he discover this talent? Boredom led him to find something to do while the lessons passed him by. He was lucky, he found value in his ‘disability’.. Most dyslexics have no idea that they have unusual gifts around perspective. Instead, they get shunted into ‘special classes’ and classed as learning disabled. And, yes, they are disabled in a society that places value on facts more than intuition, creativity and exploration.

Why don’t kids get to learn from the beginning about critical thinking, logic and evaluation, using their intuition rather than rules and memorised systems of a society which has already proven itself to be unable to live satisfactorily by these methods?

Walsh suggests that the new curriculum should have 3 core concepts.

Awareness, Honesty and Responsibility. I’d add Curiosity and a Go for It Attitude. In addition they need to learn to read and use a computer so that they can explore facts for themselves.

Here are some of Walsh’s suggested courses

Understanding Power
Peaceful conflict resolution
loving relationships
Function and interrelation of body mind and spirit
How to learn
Creativity and using it
Joyous sexual expression
Fairness
Tolerance
Awareness and responsibility
Science and spirituality
Ethical economics

and so on…

Of course he points out that much of this is already taught in the guise of Social Studies. BUT it only takes up a minute percentage of the curriculum. Walsh suggests it should BE the curriculum and I agree. Once a kid has developed creativity and learnt how to learn, and a sense of the wonder of each individual, the world is their oyster.. if they want facts they are all out there on the internet, in books etc…

What tools do we have

This is where NLP and associated ‘sciences’ come in useful.. Kids can be taught some of the skills of rapport, language, second positioning, pacing and leading, creativity processes, creating anchors for the good times, positive self talk, affirmations etc…

Joseph Riggio, my mentor, bases his work on Joseph Campbell’s study of mythology..and Roye Frazier’s Generative Imprint work. Frazier believes that we all hold every experience somatically in our body.. and that we can relearn the ultimate state of being at our best.. and with guidance can learn to pinpoint it exactly, by making minute adjustments to our posture, line of sight etc.. This is the essence of the practical work Joseph taught us to do with people.

Campbell says “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track, which has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.”

When you learn to Do what is YOU, you will be happy.. BE who you truly are, follow your divine blueprint and it will all work out OK.

Campbell examines the common underlying theory and structure of mythology all over the world. It all follows the same pattern. Campbell outlines this in what he calls the Hero’s Journey. It goes like this.

Our hero's journey

We all hear a call to adventure, many of us ignore it because we have been taught to buckle down and accept our lot. Get a sensible job rings in our ears, competing with the knocking. Some of us never answer the call and die unhappy and unfulfilled. The call is always about who you are asking to be heard. When we do answer the call, it is because the knocking is so loud we are compelled. At that point, a master teacher appears [remember that saying ‘when the student is ready the teacher appears].. then we begin our trials and throughout magic helpers come to us.. Finally we come through, find the elixir and take it back.. but of course we know that the elixir is not the holy grail, but one of many similar elixirs… and before we know it we are ready for the next call.. It takes courage, but once the leap of faith is made, and the intent is out there, the universe conspires to assist…

I like this because it works for me and I am currently experiencing my latest call to adventure…

Instead of teaching kids, “Life happens, struggle through because it isn’t fair but tough”, we could teach them that Life Happens, What Next? If you can’t change something move on.. there is only living in the now then moving on..

Life is a journey and we are all unique so when we open ourselves and our kids out to that fact and teach them the values of harmonious living, we will truly be contributing to the evolution of the world through the evolution of each individual to their own greatness. If we continue to teach them what hasn’t worked for us, we are not following the basic presuppositions of NLP.. If it doesn’t work, do something else..

I had a client recently, a 21 year old student who came to see me ostensibly for flirting tips. What he really wanted was to talk to someone about his dreams and desires. Here he was studying to be a chartered surveyor. A follow in the footsteps of a respected step-father, a successful property developer. And yet what he wanted to do was make a difference.. he was almost driven.

His plan was to study and open his own company and give lots of money to charity.. When I worked with him, I uncovered that he didn’t really want to be a chartered surveyor, but felt that unless he had a ‘good job’ he couldn’t make a difference.. he equated money and charitable donations with the only way he could do it. Once he had expanded from his tunnel vision he realised that he could not contribute to the world by doing work he hated.. and that he would have to seek other paths to follow his bliss… I love my work!

What's great about you?

And so, when you ask each kid, how are you when you are at your best.. you will find a uniquely different answer.. and if being at their best means writing poetry and living in poverty, fine, and if being at their best means running a large business fine, and if being at their best means travelling the world looking for fauna and flora fine and if, like the lovely lady who sweeps the road in Hammersmith [she got the British Empire Medal so I took a chance meeting on the street to ‘interview her’] being at your best is just looking around and seeing that she has made a difference and feeling a pride in a street well swept – wonderful!

Until we give children free rein to be themselves and provide an education system that fosters this fully, we will continue to produce generations of unhappy people locked into what other people think they ought to do, taking on beliefs and values that aren’t right for them… What a terrible thought…! I know, because I’ve been struggling to emerge for a long time.

It took me 40 odd years to travel my path, rewrite the old programmes, gain courage and attitude and create new programmes, to believe in me being me and to find my way… perhaps we can help the next generations of kids to find their bliss a little more quickly!!!

A reader's response March 5th 2000

I just finished reading your article about the sorry state of modern
academia. You are right on target, and I agree wholeheartedly that the way our children are being "mistaught" in school by teachers who themselves have been "mistaught" continues to be one of the leading causes of human misery.

It is no doubt one of the most insidious and subtle tools of government used to maintain control over the masses. Naturally, anyone who breaks from the standards dictated by the governing body would be labelled a rebel, a misfit, and subsequently treated as such. How utterly sad. But no matter how hard they may try, a square peg will not fit a round hole. And just think of how
much so many of those "square pegs" have contributed to humanity if the form of art, science, medicine, etc. and etc.

I am an American citizen, a mother of four beautiful and very
intelligent, outspoken children. None of my children did well in school. They were bored with school more than anything. My three daughters all dropped out before their senior year and later took the GED test which when passed would give them the so called equivalent of a high school diploma.(woopitie-doo).

None had studied for the test and my youngest daughter had not
even finished her sophomore year, but each passed with scores way above the average high school student taking the final exams before graduating. My middle daughter went on to take business courses at a community college and though she was the youngest student attending the course, she received the highest grades throughout. My daughters are extremely intelligent but I believe that such intelligence is within each and every human being.

It is the academic system, the way our children are taught to "think" and to fit in nicely with the tightly controlled structure of society, that has deliberately stifled human intelligence instead of nurturing it. GET THIS!!! Even though my daughters scored way above the average on their GED exams there many fields of employment, many companies and even industries that will not even consider them for employment because THEY DID NOT GRADUATE FROM HIGH SCHOOL AND RECEIVE A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA!!!!

To me this is one of the most outrageously ludicrous forms of corporate (and government) control. (The government allows this form of discrimination in the work place while making most any other form of discrimination illegal). My daughter who excelled in
business classes and developed her natural ability as a leader and who loves what she does because it comes so natural to her, would have been a valuable and trustworthy employee to any company or business that hired her.

Instead, she was turned down by several so called "top notch" "equal opportunity" companies because she received a GED certificate instead of a high school diploma. Her GPA and test scores not even considered. WHAT A JOKE!!! Especially considering that a great number of students that do "graduate" from high school DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO READ!!!! much less have a clue as to
what they really want to do with their lives.

Well, my daughter and her husband have started their own business and I just know that they will be successful.

As for my son, he too is struggling through school. He is a senior but will not graduate this year. Why because he is absolutely bored with the meaningless redundancy being "taught" as curriculum by teachers who are merely puppeting what they are told to teach. He is one of the most respected students in his school by his peers not so much because he is a rebel, but because he is highly intelligent and articulate. He is confident and very quick with words. His vocabulary is far advanced for his age and he writes with a natural flowing talent. BUT....according to the standard of education by which he is being judged, he is a failure, a rebel headed for trouble according to his "counsellor".

I think not. He just doesn't fit the tight little mould of what "they"
(government controlled educators) want him to squeeze into and thereby become another unhappy little cog in the great wheel of mindless humanity.

I believe our minds are a precious gift and must be appreciated as such. Should we all have the freedom to attain our potential as unique and creative human beings, to discover our inner reality, nurture it and become the fully realized person we were went to be. Like a beautiful flower in full bloom.

The educational system worldwide must be revised as you said. But it can only happen through the desire and efforts of those "rebels" and "misfits" and others who truly want to make a difference. Well I've gone on long enough and so I will sign off with my blessings to
you.

Peta's comment: This was an amazing outpouring from someone who obviously knows the value of humanity is in how they are, not what they prove in the narrow confines of a system that is designed to constrain rather than to develop and expand. Thank you for this Marcie!

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