Holistic Education – The Way Forward

Boring Facts and Academic Stuffing

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 amusing.

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.

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 hemmed my school skirt into a mini-skirt– we won’t talk about the drawing of graffiti in the metro and we certainly won’t talk about the hideous practical jokes we played on teachers.    For this I was labelled a rebel.

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.

Rebels make great leaders and motivators

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!

Learning how to live

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!

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 excessive value 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 or Joe Namath, 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 so 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 a complete revision of the current education system?

It’s time for an alternative curriculum

Facts about anything and everything are freely available 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, blue collar, 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 and each child found that special something inside.

“ Follow your fascinations and the money will appear” – Joseph Campbell

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 erducation 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 dhair 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.

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 gravitiy.

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 babysit 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 understand the gifts of ‘different’ brain wiring and dyslexic people who have become great architects, mechanics and 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’..

Dyslexics have an ability to visualize in 3d i.e look around corners in a way so-called normal people cannot.  That’s why my husband can put together stuff without measuring just from the feel of it.

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 as well as practical skills.   In addition they need to learn to read and use a computer so that they can explore facts for themselves.

New Paradigm Curriculum

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, Compassion and Tolerance
• Awareness and responsibility
• Science and spirituality
• Ethical economics – trading, bartering, resource based economics

We need a Holistic Curriculum NOW

And we also need to teach practical skils for the new paradigm that is evolving.

Permaculture – how to grow perennial food plants symbiotically without pesticides or fertilizers incorporating useful animals and water catchment.

Natural building – creating homes and other structures from natural resource materials relevant to the area  e.g. Adobe in desert areas and Cob  [clay straw and sand] in other areas. Earthship homes are created out of discarded tyres filled with mud.

Herbal medicine – learning the healing and nutritional value of local herbs, and how to make tincture and powder medicines from plants, how to use plants in emergencies

Repurposing – learning how to create useful stuff from material that would normally be thrown away.

Basic Survival Skills – how to make a fire, how to cook on a woodstove, how to forate for edible plants, how to catch and cook wild game and so on.

Nutrition and Food Awareness – every person needs to know what crap is in which processed foods and how it can affect them. And they need to know what goodness is in natural foods and how to grow and prepare their own food so that they are not forced into dependence on the processed/junk food industries poisons.

Walsh points out that many of his suggested topics are already taught in the guise of Social Studies.   BUT it only takes up a minute percentage of the current curriculum. Walsh suggests it should BE the curriculum and I believe that it should also include the practical topics.

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…

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…

The Hero’s Journey – everyone’s path is unique

Joseph Riggio, my former mentor bases his work on, amongst many other philosophies and scientific, social, psychological, neurological studies,  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 I do with personal coaching clients.

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.

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, and how to survive in an alternative system, 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 life.. If it doesn’t work, do something else..

My son the Surveyor – NOT

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.  He was studying to be a chartered surveyor which was 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 in the world.

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!

And so, when you ask each kid, how are you when you are at your best.. you will find a uniquely different answer. If being at their best means writing poetry and living with very little to do so, fine.

If being at their best means running a large business that gives people work 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 a London suburb, [she got the British Empire Medal for long service, 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!

Let Your Children BE

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 50 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!!!

Sunny Soleil Sunny is a survivor of a crap education system . She is a writer, facilitator and coach. A Licensed trainer of NLP  and MythoSelf Process -tm Facilitator as well as a Licensed Strategic Attraction-tm coach.   a consummate networker.  Her passions are communication and linguistics, permaculture and a new kind of education system that teaches the skills of today – natural building, growing food forests, water conservation and catchment, repurposing, alternative healthcare prevention and sharing and caring with a focus on 7 generations into the future.

Sunny is writing a futuristic novel and developing, with her husband, Forest Gardener, a transition workshop  for urbanites who want to sample living communally and simply and learn some simple everyday creative survival skills.

To enquire about the following click the link

Transition Courses in Northern GA/Tennessee

or

Pathfinder life coaching with Sunny

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