Minds on fire

"Man's mind is not a container to be filled but rather a fire to bekindled."
- Charles Kettering, American industrialist

An examination of the curriculum of any education system will confirm that its intention is to fill the minds of its young charges with stuff that may be regurgitated or manipulated in such a way as to pass tests.

"Teach to the test" is a mantra for teachers, indicating that their "success" as teachers will be judged not on how well prepared their children are to face the world and its rigors but how well they can do on tests on which both the children and the teachers are evaluated.

Except at the college and university levels, what children may one day do with the information and skills they learn is of little import in the classroom.

A TIA program will put growing and building well adjusted and well prepared adults in the forefront. These are what education was intended to do, to be.

Children who know what is ahead of them, why they should strive for it and how they can cope with problems they will face will not experience many of the diversions in their teens years that harm or destroy the potential of too many kids today.

No child of four years wants to become a drug addict, a murderer, a home invader, a divorcee, an emotional invalid or an agoraphobic.

These things are learned. We can prevent these things from happening.

Anything that can be fixed after it has broken can be prevented from breaking. That is never more so than with people.

Social problems are individual problems that affect whole communities by their sheer numbers.

If you don't help to change your community, no one else will. Right now, you know about Turning It Around, but others don't. Spread the word. We need your friends, family members and neighbours to help us.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic SocialProblems'
http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl
Join our TIA group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/turningitaround