I Grew, I Learned, I Showed Them All

I Grew, I Learned, I Showed Them All

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.

- Carl Sagan, American astronomer, astrophysicist, author (1934-1996)

I disappointed my father because I was poor at sports. As a result of brain and nerve damage at birth, doctors had predicted that I would never run and would not likely ever walk without a prosthetic device such as a cane or brace. The fact that I learned to walk and run without a limp did not impress him.

I learned through experience that I could not keep up with my peers in ice hockey (my father's best sport). Only after I quit hockey in my mid teens did I learn about problems at birth that would impair my abilities both physically and mentally. I learned that I never had a chance at equality in sports.

I disappointed my father because I was unable to become an avid fan of sports. It took decades for me to learn that a chemical problem in my brain caused me to endure devastating stress when I became excited while watching a game. He took my cousin (a quarterback on his high school football team, but a young man with a bad attitude) to a Grey Cup game (the Canadian equivalent of the US Superbowl) because he thought I wouldn't be interested. He didn't even ask me when he was given free tickets. My father had died in later years before I learned of my brain chemical problem and tried to learn strategies to combat it. My maternal grandfather had the same problem, but no one took notice.

I disappointed my mother because I was not good at school. I just got by. As many times as she read on my report cards that I was "not working to [my] potential", neither she nor any of my teachers ever twigged to the fact that my poor performance was because I could not read and a brain impairment meant that I had trouble remembering anything for exams. To them I was just "lazy."

I disappointed my mother, an excellent and entertaining pianist, when I studied piano for many years yet was unable to reach her level of competence because I was physically uncoordinated (small motor muscle problems) and could not read music. I learned to be a great appreciator of recorded and live music through my experience with them, but this did not impress. I could have become an orchestra director, except that I could not read music fast enough.

I disappointed my greatest supporter among my high school teachers. As head of the music department he guided me into leads in music activities and musical plays and delighted when I entered the Faculty of Music for my first year at University of Toronto. He would not speak to me when I left the faculty program after one year because I was physically and mentally unable to do the work. I learned that I had a head for directing music, which benefitted and excited many children over the years in choirs and musicals when I was a teacher.

I disappointed most of my immediate superiors in my jobs. They could not understand why I did not pick up on how to do the jobs easily, though none of them made the slightest attempt to show me what I needed to know, not even once. Years later I learned to teach others what I knew because I understood how helpless it felt to be given responsibilities to do something but not the tools to do them with.

I disappointed the principals of the schools where I taught. I directed my teaching attention in different ways from other teachers because I thought it important to raise a whole child--including social and emotional skills and development--rather than to just each to a curriculum. I was often in trouble for being "different" in my methods. As it happened, my methods tended to be five years ahead of their time, as five years after I got into trouble in several cases the school board began to insist on all teachers teaching the way I had--because the "new" methods were in use in California, not because I had succeeded with so many children.

I disappointed my first wife--a very good teacher and a reader--because I never read books. She didn't understand that I was functionally illiterate due to my childhood problems. She was not impressed that I got a master's degree from the University of Toronto although I was functionally illiterate and never read a book the whole way through. While I muddled my way through teaching and she was a resource teacher--a teacher whose sole purpose was to help other teachers--in a different part of the school board, she never offered to give me the slightest assistance. She divorced me because she thought I lacked potential.

I disappointed some of my staff in the small business I ran for several years. They resented my insistence on quality and consistency, while they wanted to do things the easiest way, and they begrudged my coaching them to do their jobs in the best ways possible. Most left my employment to take jobs in places where working conditions were far worse. I learned that quality standards mean a great deal to many people who want to get their money's worth when they buy something. In turn, I learned how to look for quality and durability in my purchases as well.

I disappointed my neighbours for many years before I moved a couple of years ago. One group wanted me to drink and take drugs on weekends, which I would not do. Another wanted me to ignore local and provincial laws to give them favours. I knew that these were wrong for me, so my wife and I researched to learn what we believe is the best community in our country in which to live. We were right. Life has never been better for us since we moved.

Along the way I learned that disappointment is part of life. People will always be disappointed in us when we don't do what they want us to do and when we refuse to do things the wrong way. I have even had my life threatened twice. I learned that I can easily avoid and ignore people who are just plain bad for me.

I learned that to gain the respect of many people you need to be good at something. It doesn't really matter what so long as it can impress them. Everybody can be good at something. If they learn at what they can be good with the help of others who care for and about them, it will come sooner than it did for me. We can all help by teaching that lesson to children.

I began my lifelong learning mission at the age of 15. Until I learned to read better at age 44, I listened a great deal. When I began to read, I read things that made me more knowledgeable. Eventually my "encyclopedic knowledge" frightened some people. I learned that I could teach the ones who cared about what I knew and ignore the ones who refused to learn.

In recent years I have learned that helping others (the Dalai Lama calls it "compassion"--I am not a Buddhist) is the secret to happiness and to finding our purpose in life. May you be blessed with this knowledge as well.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to give children what they need rather than just what the school curriculum offers or what they can learn from television and video games.

Learn more at http://billallin.com/  

Do You Know What You Missed As A Child?

Turn the power of praise upon whatever you wish to increase. Give thanks that it is now fulfilling your ideal.
- Charles Fillmore, cofounder of Unity School of Christianity (1854-1948)

Okay, I accept that the quote sounds like it was spoken directly from a pulpit. But that was the way Fillmore spoke and wrote.

Praise is to human social interaction what fertilizer is to gardens. Most gardens will grow without using fertilizer, but they may grow stronger, healthier (free from risks of attack by competing species of plants) and more plentiful with fertilizer. So will the good effects of praise on relationships, including work relationships.

As members of a social species, we human naturally seek acceptance from our fellow humans. We want to fell that we belong. We want to feel that we are a part of something of significance. We want to feel that the part we contribute helps to make our total experience work better, both for us and for those who are part of our group.

The traditional model of relationships in a work environment was based mostly on the old master-slave model of our distant past. People work to the best of their abilities because they get paid to do so, so that model dictates. But it doesn't always work that way.

People can do barely adequate work for which they get paid a more than reasonable wage, but they can't necessarily be fired without the employer risking a wrongful dismissal legal case. A barely adequate job may not only hold a company back, it could bury the company if a significant number of employees have a similar attitude.

In the new business model that is increasing in popularity since the 1980s, an employer tries to make each employee feel that the success of the company is a direct reflection of their own person success. Even in times of poor markets, the employer strives to encourage employees by watching carefully for individual examples of good work and successful dealings with the various publics of the business so that the employees feel that they will al work their way through troubled times together.

In this business model, there are no bad employees (or there shouldn't be), only employees that need more encouragement and direction to be more successful. Every one of us has bad times in our lives and they don't correspond with the bad times at our place of work (we hope). A good employer will help a troubled employee through those bad personal times in order to get good work while on the job.

It works the same in a family. Every young child seems to bring home a steady supply of creations (usually paintings) from school or a pre-school facility. Those creations make their way onto the refrigerator or a bulletin board, so the child knows he or she is appreciated. But that only works for just so long.

A child knows if he or she has produced a piece of trash painting, even if the teacher praised it and encouraged the child to take it home (less trash to dispose of after school). If the parent gives only blanket praise, as the teacher had done, the child knows that the parent is praising him or her, only the effort that went into it. In other words, flattery, with no substance or sincerity.

A child needs to know what is good about a piece of work, not that the whole thing is "marvelous." A child needs to know that the parent understands what is in the painting, The child learns that by having the parent ask questions about it, then adding comments and constructive advice.

Just as an Olympic athlete feeds on successes along the way to the next international Olympics, a child grows in a positive way by both praise and help to improve next time. Blanket (non-specific) praise is treated by a child the way everyone should treat flattery, knowing that it's for show, but without value.

The sole objective of a child--every child--is to grow to be a competent and confident adult who can cope with downturns in life because he or she has the skills and tools to work with, yet having the ability to achieve great successes because their increasing body of skills and improved talents have produced better than ever results.

Kids know this intuitively. Parents, many of whom treat their children as if they were never children themselves, don't necessarily remember this.

The prime objective of a parent is not to provide food, shelter and video games for the child. The prime objective is to be a role model and teacher so that the child stands "on the shoulders of giants" (Isaac Newton's words) in order to reach greater heights than the parents could or have.

No child ever has the objective of being nearly as good as his or her parent. Nor should it ever be the objective or a parent that the child should only be nearly as good. Both child and parent should want the child to be better because the child could take advantage of the experience, skills and talents of the parent, then add their own to create something new and unique.
If a parent doesn't "get it," the child may not be what he or she could have been.

A person doesn't need perfect parents in order to reach self fulfillment and achieve their potential. But a child who has parents who know what they are doing in growing the child will reach greater heights sooner than the one with little help from home.

As an educator and sociologist specializing in education, I have never met a parent who didn't do and want to do their very best for their children. I also have never met a parent who claimed that they knew enough--what they needed to know and should have known--about raising children when they first became parents.

That's wrong. The discrepancy is both tragic and unnecessary. People--kids and adults--suffer because they don't know.

We have the knowledge. But it's tied up with a few educators and social science professionals who meet roadblocks everywhere they turn trying to spread the word.

Talk about it.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to know what kids really need instead of just the limited stuff that school curriculum provides.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

What Our Kids Need To Survive

Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them.
- Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister (1804-81)

We humans are naturally inclined to gather into clusters of individual living spaces, whether hamlets or cities, when doing so means we can produce more food than we need to survive. But we aren't naturally inclined toward any particular form of order (government) or forms of cleanliness, other than we don't usually foul our own nests.

Order and cleanliness must be taught if they are to be followed. If they are to be followed by everyone, they must be taught to everyone. That means to every child.

That's where modern societies fall down, badly, tragically. So long as most people get the main parts of the society's messages as they grow up, everyone assumes that every child gets the messages.

And they assume that every child gets the same messages in the same manner and with the same effectiveness.

These assumptions are all wrong. Every one.

When members of our communities mess up, such as by breaking laws, having unwanted children they can't or won't support or breaking down emotionally due to excessive stress our only solutions are to punish them or fill them with drugs.

This lesson is not hard, but we aren't learning it. We're screwing up and paying more each year to make up for the messes we're making. Anything we want everyone to know and to follow must be taught to every child or adolescent.

That's it! We can't depend on every set of parents to teach their children the same lessons because they don't know the lessons themselves. If you doubt that, check out how many adolescents are in prison, are homeless or are in gangs because they can't make it on their own.

I am not aware of any government that does not pass laws. I am as well not aware of any government that has a systematic method for ensuring that laws that it passes are taught to the members of the public to which they apply. That doesn't make sense.

I am aware that in many jurisdictions of the world, ignorance of the law is not accepted as an excuse for breaking it.

In the western world, cleanliness is taught. Some would say to a fanatic extent, given the obsession we have for buying cleaning products that are far more powerful than necessary and that harm the environment when they leave our homes. But disease born from unclean and unhealthy environments is in decline. No so in all parts of the world, as we know from the spread of bird flu.

Since we leave the teaching of cleanliness mostly to corporations these days, of course they teach us to use their products. Only later do we learn (the hard way) that their products have done considerable harm to the environment (air, water, land). By then they have moved on to entice us with products that are "cleaner" and "greener."

Our governments and our education systems take no responsibility for teaching either laws or cleanliness beyond what is minimally necessary to get them through the day. They leave that to our media, which means to our corporations.

We have only one way to ensure that every child learns the same lessons that we expect them to follow as adults. That way is to put what we want them to learn on school curriculum.

In the United States today, over ten percent of adults are either in prison or have criminal records. That's the highest in the world, per capita. But even other countries such as Canada, the UK and Germany aren't far behind.

We also need to teach our children one other kind of lesson. We need to teach them how to cope when their lives get messed up and they might turn to breaking the law, to drugs, to suicide, to abuse or to obsessions such as overwork. They need to know what to do when they realize they have a problem that causes them to get involved with some form of anti-social behaviour.

Let's begin with you. Have you taught your children all the laws they need to follow? Have you taught them how their lives (and probably yours) will be destroyed if they turn to counterproductive measures such as drugs, alcohol or overwork?

Have you taught them what to do with packaging when they have consumed its contents on the street? Judging by the streets of most cities, not every parent has taught that lesson.

The only way to ensure that family-friendly and community-friendly practices are followed is to teach them to every child. Every child.

Will schools have time, given how busy their teaching schedules are already? Yes. They will get the time they gain when they don't have to deal with misbehaviour and lack of attention because their kids want to be taught what they really need but aren't getting.

Oh, yes, kids know that they need to know lots of things to function properly and in a healthy manner as adults. They aren't sure what those things are. They know naturally that they need to be able to cope in the society they will enter as independent adults soon. They don't know how to do that.

Most know that they aren't getting all of what they need. It upsets them terribly, though they tend to demonstrate their frustration in different ways than adults do. Kids misbehave when they aren't getting what they need in life. When they misbehave, we call them brats. They don't know what else to do to get our attention. We punish them.

Don't wonder what's the matter with kids these days. Wonder instead how so many manage to join the mainstream as adults when finding out what they need to know is so hard for them as children and adolescents.

Do you know what laws your national government passed in the last year, laws you will have to obey or find yourself in court? Kids won't either. And they have no way to find out if we don't provide ways for them to learn.

Do you know where to turn when life gets too much for you? Suicide? Drugs? Abuse? That may not be you, but it's what a shocking percentage of people do.

Being the clever and resourceful person you are, you likely can answer these questions positively. Not many can.

Talk about it.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teaches who want to equip their children with what they need to know to survive and thrive as adults, instead of struggling along on what they learn in school now.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Are You A Doughhead? Find Out

We shall succeed only so far as we continue that most distasteful of all
activity, the intolerable labor of thought.
- Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961)

Hand's statement seems like a backhanded universal condemnation of humanity. The hope he offers of success for humanity seems dim, at best.

We are, indeed, surrounded by people who don't think. They have brain activity, but that is usually the means by which they rationalize their agreement with the dominant authority who provides them with the thoughts they absorb and believe. They don't actually think anything much for themselves.

Why, if humans are among the most successful species on the planet (we live and survive everywhere we can find food), how could so many of us lack the power to think or give up the ability to think for ourselves? That ability to think allowed us to survive where hundreds and thousands of other species went extinct.

The answer is: we assiduously teach ourselves to avoid thinking. Commercials and other advertising teach us that we don't need to choose among the many brands of detergents, fashion brands and toothpaste, we only need to choose the brand with the most effective advertising. The best advertising trains us best so we don't have to think about it.

Our media teach us what to think and believe about politics. There is no such thing as a major media network that does not have a political agenda and party it supports more than the others. They claim neutrality, but practise something quite the opposite.We tend to support the party and its candidates that the media we pay attention to advocate.

Within offices we have unwritten guidelines about what's right and what's stylish to wear. It's unusual in a factory lunchroom to find one person who regularly disagrees with the political stance of the majority. Workers may support different sports teams, but they enjoy the camaraderie and competition of challenging "their" team against those of others of their co-workers.

In schools, as children, often the lesson most consistently taught is to be quiet when others are talking, during a video presentation or at certain other times. While this behaviour is both courteous and a means of learning, it also teaches children that their thoughts and ideas and concepts they may devise are not worthy of airing or of consideration.

Opportunities to express and have accepted their own thoughts are few in some cases non-existent in the classroom. Without those opportunities to express themselves in a receptive environment, kids learn to avoid thinking because they have nowhere to speak up.

That's thorough teaching, socialization and training. We teach people that they don't need to think because others will always be prepared to do their thinking for them. Isn't the teacher or parent always right, at least to themselves?

To a great extent, this practice has worth. Every society in the world has values and beliefs it holds dear and these must be taught to every child and adult so that chaos does not ensue with people robbing each other, killing each other, raping or cheating each other. We need conformity to some extent.

What we don't need is the thorough lack of thought that so many people give to their lives. A simple example: at gift-giving time (such as Christmas) do we give a child the gift he or she wants or do we consider what gift would best help the child through the next phase of his or her life? That is, do we give a play gift or a learning gift?

In most cases, the gift will be what will satisfy the child. Toys and electronic games break so easily or get cast aside so quickly because the fun but meaningless gifts do not provide what kids naturally know they must have, preparation for their lives as adults. They inherently know what they need, but they ask for the toys they have learned to want from advertising and peer influence.

They have about 20 years to learn how to be competent and knowledgeable adults. By age 20, most young adults know how they should act, what they should do, how they should think. Each of the "shoulds" in the previous sentence results from repeated training: don't think about this, just do it.

Is thinking such hard work? Very much so. For someone of middle age who has done little of it, thinking independently may be virtually impossible. They don't know what to do to engage the gears required to think. They may literally lack the neural pathways to think beyond the surface level of any subject. They get used to learning from others what and how they should "think." They believe what they're told they should think.

Thinking requires about 33 percent as much energy as heavy lifting. The difference is that thinking can continue for an extended period of time, whereas heavy lifting usually takes place for a brief period of time. Over a one hour period, one person thinking can burn many times more calories than someone doing the average construction job, for example.

What happens from years of brain atrophy? Senility, for one. Senility results from long term lack of use of the brain. Senility is totally preventable. Just think.

Health professionals advise now that people should find many activities that will engage their brains to get them thinking as they get older. It's a way to greatly reduce, if not totally eliminate, the risk of Alzheimer's. Just as grass doesn't grow on a busy street, the lesions of Alzheimer's may not grow in a busy brain.

Whoda thought? Not nearly enough of us, judging by the increasing numbers of people dying from Alzheimer's. If you want more evidence, walk down the halls of many nursing homes where patients are left in the halls: watching people walk back and forth along their passageway is the most stimulation the brains of many of them get. There is no brain activity to speak of behind those hollow eyes.

Learned Hand said that "we shall succeed only..." He should have said "we shall survive only..." As individuals and as a species.

The world does not need a flood of more stupid old people to support. Let's make some changes.

Start with yourself. Being a reader, you are not likely to suffer from senility or Alzheimer's, but you know people who will. Maybe you can motivate them to change. Think about it.

Some of the most brilliant thoughts these days are coming from elderly people who have recently learned to think for themselves. One thing we could do is to give them a forum to be heard.

Remember, they have been taught since childhood that their thoughts are not worthy and they will not be heard. They need you to listen to them. And maybe to find others who will pay attention as well.

Bill Allin
"Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems," a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to raise children who can think, instead of socially acceptable automatons who do and think what they are told for their entire lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Why So Many Kids Go Wrong

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
- Albert Camus, French writer (1913-1960)

Well, I do, Albert, so where are you so I can refute your statement?

Seriously, Camus was right, some people do go to extensive lengths to be considered normal by others. But why?

We are social animals. As such we have standards, mores and rules/laws by which people must conduct their affairs so that our society does not descend into chaos. When we deal with a clerk in a store, for example, we have an idea of what to expect from that person, as the clerk does for us.

Two or three decades ago (depending on the location) a movement began to make people in wheelchairs have access to every building they may need to enter. That made sense for a medical building, for example, because someone in a wheelchair would certainly need to visit a doctor eventually.

People in wheelchairs wanted to be treated like everyone else and have access everywhere someone with two working legs would have. To them, normal meant having the same rights or access as those who could walk.

Striving to be normal goes much deeper than that. A child who is socially underdeveloped may work very hard to be like the rest of the kids, but that child can never be "normal" in a social setting. The child may seem to be a loner, may stutter, may remain quiet with others around, may agree with the leader of the group most often, will likely not do well with schoolwork, but try as he or she might they will not be able to be like the others, normal in a social setting.

Being socially underdeveloped as a child carries through adulthood, sometimes through life itself. Many socially underdeveloped kids eventually learn the social skills their peers did as children, whereupon they can interact in social settings like others, thus be "normal." That catching up socially requires a huge amount of effort, something Camus says that few understand.

Certainly the peers of a socially underdeveloped child don't understand. They consider the kid weird or strange. They nitpick to find faults with the child that may not exist in reality so they can talk about the odd one in their own "normal" groups.

Often a socially underdeveloped child will be bullied by another socially underdeveloped child. Bullies are classic cases of social underdevelopment, perhaps with a touch of maldevelopment. They need social interaction with peers, but have no idea how to achieve it. They want to be normal, but can't, so they lash out at the weakest among them, which is usually another socially underdeveloped child. The same happens with adult bullies and their victims.

Children who are underdeveloped emotionally have similar adjustment problems. They tend to be punished for their deficiencies and the resulting behaviours, as socially underdeveloped children are as well. What we don't understand in odd or strange children usually causes them to violate social norms, thus we punish them to teach them how to act normally.

Yes, we punish children and adults for being socially and/or emotionally underdeveloped and acting out because they can't cope with their inability to be normal with their peers.

By punishing them as children we ensure that they will not likely rise to the level of development of their peers because they will believe that it's impossible for them to be normal. They will always feel left out, different.

Almost every adult in a prison is either socially or emotionally underdeveloped or maldeveloped, or both. At that age they have been broken for so long that society could not afford to do the necessary psychological repairs, so we put them behind bars and forget about them. Pretend they don't exist in our society. Call them bad, social offenders.

It may be true that most children are born with the same potential. That potential is very different among them by the age they enter the school system because of their different opportunities (or lack thereof) to develop socially and emotionally as well as they do physically and intellectually in the intervening few years.

Trouble begins in the school system. Teachers are not only not granted permission to work to develop children's social and emotional skills according to the curriculum, they may be denied permission (in most classroom settings) by the administration. "There isn't time." "Stick to the curriculum."

By the time kids enter school, many parents believe they have taken their children as far as they need to socially and emotionally, so they leave it up to the school to carry on. The school can't do much in most cases.

Every socially or emotionally inappropriate behaviour of adults can be traced back to social or emotional (or both) deficits when they were children. No one wants to do this and few will try because it upsets everyone who prefers to deny any responsibility for underdevelopment or maldevelopment of social miscreant adults, when they were children.

Society can manage social and emotional development of children the same way it manages intellectual and physical development. In fact, plans to do this are fairly easy and very cheap to implement.

Before anything can be changed, we must admit as a society that we have children who are not receiving assistance with their social and emotional development. Then we can put programs in place to train parents and teachers how to fulfill the rest of their respective roles in raising a child.

Talk about it.

Bill Allin is a sociologist, retired teacher and author of the book Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, as well as the fountain of inspiration for programs related to the TIA program.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Abe Lincoln's Best Advice

"A child is a person who is going to carry on whatever you have started. He is going to sit where you are sitting and when you are gone, attend to those things which you think are important. You may adopt all the policies you please, but how they will be carried out depends on him. He will assume control of your cities, states and nations. He is going to move in and take over your churches, schools, universities, and corporations. Your books are going to be judged, accepted or condemned by him. The fate of humanity is in his hands. So it might be well to pay him some attention."
- Abraham Lincoln

"He is going to...attend to those things which you think are important."

What do you think is important? Did you (Do you) consciously, proactively, knowingly teach those things to your children?

Surprisingly, most people don't. Children, to a great extent in their first six years and to a slightly lesser extent during the following five years, form and reform concepts of their world frequently. Not your world, but the one they perceive with their senses and conceptualize with their minds.

Their entire existence rests within the concept they form of their world, usually based on what they observe from their parents, what they are taught by their parents and how they are treated by their parents. If their parents have extensive social skills, the kids will pick them up whether the lessons are taught formally or not. They will fare better if the parents teach pertinent social skills (such as how to make and keep friends, how to treat casual friends and classmates) rather than requiring the children to pick them up vicariously.

What children don't learn by watching is emotional skills, knowledge to advance their emotional development, especially in a small family with only one child. These kinds of skills--how to cope with life's problems and downturns--need to be taught and learned through experience and lessons from parents.

Will your child "assume control of your cities, states and nations" and "take over your churches, schools, universities, and corporations" as you move on, the way Lincoln said? Yes, but only a very few of them will. Those who receive a balanced upbringing, with equal emphasis on intellectual, physical, social and emotional development will have the ability to assume leadership roles.

Don't the smartest ones reach the top? Not usually. The people who reach the top of situations such as Lincoln described have had thorough and balanced development in the four streams listed in the previous paragraph, but they also have a great deal of drive and determination to excel. These they usually pick up from their parents, though other sources (mentors) are possible.

Most people in our various societies are drones that get by with sufficient knowledge and skills in what they need to know and do, but know little else beyond that. An architect may not be able to sort recyclables on trash pickup day. A factory worker may know how to change a flat tire, but not how to economize on fuel efficiency and eliminate as much pollution as possible from his vehicle.

We all depend on others to do for us what we can't or don't know how to do ourselves. Mostly we don't do these things because we never learned how. We weren't taught by a parent or grandparent. Most of us know very little and can do very little beyond what we do for a living and what we do as hobbies.

We can't do what we never learned how to do. Most of the fundamentals of what we can do we learned from our parents, either by watching them or by learning from lesson they taught. Or we were prompted by them or some experience we had.

As children we depend on our parents to help us form our world. If they don't help with that (and many don't do it actively and knowingly), we grow up with many misconceptions, misinformation or ignorance about many subjects we should be able to get by with.

Sadly, there are few classes where parents can learn what they need to know and do to be parents and what they need to teach their children to help them with their various kinds of development. Every parent tries to do their best, but few know what they need to know.

Maybe you could get together with some others of your neighbours and encourage your board of education or school administration to launch such a program.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents who want to know what their children need and when they need it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

The Struggle To Be Remembered By History

You can't leave footprints in the sands of time if you’re sitting on your butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?
- Bob Moawad, Chairman and CEO of Edge Learning Institute

Addressing the charming imagery, it seems that many people would be satisfied to leave their buttprints in the sands of time. Only to have them disappear with the first breeze or wave.

At some point in their lives, almost everyone in every society becomes a follower, one who accepts what the leaders dish out because they believe they have no power or influence to change "what is and must be." For some this happens in the early years of childhood when parents teach them to be quiet and obedient, to follow the rules and to avoid being rude to others. Leaving footprints means insulting someone, usually someone who gets lots of attention. The insult may not be intended or justified, but it happens.

Others learn to stay in line and obey in school, where differences from the norm are discouraged in many cases, unless they are of the intellectual variety. Most of the rest learn to be followers when they reach the workforce, where individuality, independent thinking and acting without approval are strongly discouraged in most places of employment.

A few struggle to have their own small business, to be their own boss. At least 85 percent of these fail within the first five years because the business owners have not learned to think independently, do not have the spirit of an entrepreneur (who was inevitably a rebel in school and a troublemaker before reaching school age).

That leaves a very small percentage of people who have the internal strength to leave their footprints in the sands of time. Most of those suffer social and psychological abuse at the hands of the socially and politically powerful of their time, people who manage to wield their power because they have the ability to keep the noses of most they encounter to the grindstone. To keep them following.

Those few unique individuals who survive the social pressure deserve our recognition because they survived when most others caved. Merely surviving without finding themselves in prison or a psych unit warrants our acknowledgement, at least. Almost all of the anti-establishment leaders of the 1960s, for example, became powerful leaders within the business or academic establishment ten to 20 years later. For which should we remember them?

Within that group of survivors a few find a way to specialize by becoming expert at a skill, such as painting, acting or an athletic endeavour. They work every available hour to rise above the masses of their respective fields, often at the sacrifice of family or social life. When they reach the level where they really can leave their footprints in the sands of time, they have followers and admirers. They still always have enemies and naysayers, but everyone who succeeds at anything and gets public recognition gains a following if they want it.

In a world of nearly seven billion people, how many of us have the ability to leave our footprints in the sands of time?

There is always room for those with the desire and determination. The more of us that make it, the more of us can offer mutual support.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show the tiny path out of the forest of conformity.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Life's Major Choice: Learn Or Decay

Learning is weightless, a treasure you can always carry easily.
- Chinese Proverb

Such sayings exist in every language and culture. Yet far too many people in western countries today carry emotional burdens so heavy they don't give a thought to learning.

"Learning is for the young."
"I'm far too old to be keeping up with modern developments and the rat race."
"The world's going to hell in a handbasket. I don't want to stay up with the pace of destruction."

Literature from ancient times shows that older people then thought that young people were flighty, inconsiderate, rude, uncommitted and thoughtless abour the consequences of their actions on their own future and the future of their people. Little has changed that way.

But people in ancient times valued learning and respected older people whom they considered to be wiser because they knew much more than younger people.

What has changed? The pace of life in modern times has sped up alarmingly. Wisdom earned the hard way in the past may have little application in the present. Unless the older people of the present can keep up with younger people in terms of what they know. Wise old people have no audience if they can't speak the same language as young people.

Only when two generations can speak to each other, as equals, but one with greater depth of experience and knowledge, can wisdom be passed along to younger generations today.

Until 30 years ago, the desire of a majority of working people was to reach retirement age when they could be on what amounted to a permanent vacation. When Baby Boomers saw their grandparents enjoying only a few years of retirement, then dying because they did not work their bodies and their minds, many decided to change their concept of retirement.

We are still in the transition phase between the old way of thinking where we have an abundance of elderly people who fear keeping up with today's rapid advance of developments and those in the newer phase who consider learning to be a lifelong pursuit.

Many people still don't understand how light a burden learning is. More importantly, by not having the knowledge they may need, they don't know how to work their way through many of life's problems that cause them real emotional burden. So they struggle.

The human body and brain were not designed to relax for long. They were both designed to solve problems and do work. Those that don't, decay.

There is no status quo to maintain.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to help you build a fulfilling life for as long as you want.
Learn more at http://billallin.com