A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
- Lazarus Long, fictional character in Robert A Heinlein novels
"Neurotic" in this case may be taken to mean "emotionally excessive to the point of being harmful."
Insecurity breeds jealousy. The two are not irrevocably linked. Insecurity can also lead to bullying, to lack of an ability to commit to a relationship, to various emotional problems other than neuroses, to addictions, to violence and rage, to bad relationships and to divorce.
Consider how prevalent these are in our society.
They are so common that social scientists refer to them as social problems, meaning that so many people have these problems that the numbers alone create further problems in churches and clubs, in communities, in the workplace, in legislative assemblies of government, in countries, even at the United Nations.
People learn to feel secure during their maturation, as they grow from children, through adolescence, into adulthood and beyond. They key word in that last sentence is "learn." People learn to feel secure. It doesn't come as a matter of course. People learn insecurity as well.
If security or lack of it is learned, who teaches it? We all help in the process of teaching insecurity. Insecurity is another word for fear. People learn insecurity in their families, as children, in school (not intentionally in the classroom), in the playground, in various groups and unhealthy friendships. They learn it from television and newspapers that encourage us to fear each other, on the street, in offices, in elevators, in our homes. They learn it from clerks in stores who ignore them while helping other customers who came in later.
Where do people learn security? That which should be learned is usually taught by someone, isn't it?
No one teaches people how to be secure. No one teaches them that fear is not just harmful, but unnecessary. In the United States, the recently retired president, self-titled "the war president," taught the necessity of believing in a War On Terror (with what results?) and he personally controlled the status of alerts (Amber Alert, Red Alert).
Learning to avoid fear and how to feel secure can be taught. It's a matter of understanding certain facts and mastering some skills. If it can be taught and if it's so important and so damaging to us personally and to our communities and our countries, we should be teaching it.
The information needed and the skills to be learned are available. They are neither hidden nor secret. They simply are not taught.
Are you afraid of anything? Do you feel insecure? Lots of people do, but it's not a necessary consequence of modern society as ultra-conservatives would have us believe.We fear and we feel insecure because we have not learned how to avoid these harmful emotions.
Someone has something to gain by making us feel afraid and insecure in such massive numbers. Of that you may be certain. I won't point fingers because it will not take much thinking on your part to figure out who is responsible for your fear and insecurity.
The economy is bad, are you afraid to lose your job? Unless you die within the next two years, you will survive the recession and get another job. Plan now what you would do and how you would go about it if you were to lose your job. If you don't make a plan, maybe you have something to worry about. If you do, you won't need to worry because you will know exactly what you will do.
If your spouse died or unexpectedly announced his/her desire for a divorce, what would you do? With a plan, these events would bring unhappiness. But they would not necessarily destroy your life. Having a plan of what you would do in case of tragedy is not a self fulfilling prophesy. It's simply being ready.
There are two ways to avoid insecurity and fear. You learned them by reading this article.
It would be wise if this kind of information and these skills were taught to everyone. It could be taught in schools, if we wanted it.
It would cost almost nothing to prepare teachers to teach social and emotional skills. Just give each teacher a book about it and the authority to teach it.
Imagine a world without fear.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow secure and self confident children into adults who won't contribute to the social problems we endure today and who will lead emotionally and socially healthy lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Showing posts with label schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label schools. Show all posts
Monday, March 16, 2009
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Schools Teach Children To Be Mindless Consumers
One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought thatperhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position.Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read.
- John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian-born American economist (1908-2006)
Alas, Mr. Galbraith's statement bore more truth than even he may have realized.
First of all, a Canadian study a few years ago for McLeans magazine showed that only six percent of Canadian adults read more than three books per year. Considering that many people read books related to their work--indeed, must read them, such as medical doctors and other professionals, to stay up with advances in their respective fields--the number of people who read for pleasure, including those who read nonfiction simply to learn more, must be tragically small.
Although I have not seen similar studies relating to citizens of the USA or other western countries, I have no reason to believe that their reading rates would differ from those of Canadians.
Oh, we read, most of us. We read junk mail delivered to our homes, prodigious quantities of emails that serve us no good, internal memoes that usually mean nothing to us in our workplace and news in newspapers, magazines or on the internet. Those news sources that we choose ourselves tend to be biased, as all news sources are. The news sources we choose tend to all be biased in the same directions, preventing us from getting confused by a wide variety of opinions.
Thus we come to believe that our news sources present a fair and reasonable assessment of the news of the day. If our chosen news sources don't cover a story, it can't be important. Or we simply chose to believe that all other events are of lesser importance such that they don't deserve to breach our personal intellectual radars.
Thereby we funnel ourselves into comfortable grooves where we believe that most other people in the world think like ourselves. It may not be true, but we believe it's true, through practice and habit. Thus we come to take comfortably pretentious positions, as Galbraith noted.
When something that someone says or writes violates the sanctity of our cozy corner of thought, we think that person or organization must be on the fringe, likely dangerous because it might cause others to come around to its position. As we have persuaded ourselves that those who do not think like us are not "normal" or "average" or right, some of us feel it necessary to expunge the sources of such anti-social thought from public consciousness. We bitch and criticize and condemn.
We believe it is only right, indeed our duty, to prevent seditious thoughts from invading the minds of innocent people ("Save the children!") to the possible extent that others begin to think differently from us, in progressively larger numbers.
Eventually, the "we" referenced above get old, become disregarded by the younger generation in power, die off and join history as "those who thought differently in those bygone days." Some of them were strong supporters of slavery, believing that some people (always the social group to which they belonged) were naturally superior to others and had the right to treat them like pets or hunting prey.
The original aboriginal tribe of Newfoundland, Canada, for example, whose skin colour most likely resembled the "red skins" that Europeans began to call all natives of North America, were literally hunted into extinction, for sport. The unsociable Beotuk Indians had a habit of covering their exposed skin with red ochre, making them sufficiently different that Europeans thought they should be eliminated as a threat to social purity.
After that we had men who thought women so intellectually stupid that they should not have the right to vote, to equal pay for equal work, to be treated without abuse or to receive compensation if they were chucked out of their homes by their men (owners) who got tired of them.
Even today we have men in some western societies who believe that war is the only way to subjugate inferior peoples. Our leaders--who may be among these people--may tell lies to persuade enough voters to support going to war with ultra-sophisticated weapons and smart bombs against people who can only defend themselves with knives, rifles and stupid car bombs. Somehow there are still people who will believe that making war is the only and best route to peace.
You can see how pretentious the positions of such people must be, that they will believe the lies of the leaders who secured their positions in the first place by lying to those same people to get elected.
John Kenneth Galbraith, a brilliant man who believed his calling was to teach in a university and to write for university students and graduates, had no answers to the dilemma he posed in our quote. Yet there is a solution. And it's a simple one. And extraordinarily cheap.
Teach the children what we want them to know and to be able to think their way through pretentious and lying positions posed by others who want little more than to twist their minds into believing that their lives only have value if they do what their leaders tell them.
Our school systems are set up on a model that prepares young people to be the workers and consumers of the future. That is their whole purpose. And they do it well. But they don't have to teach creative and eager children to be dull automatons who simply do what their corporate employers want them to do and buy what they are told to buy in advertising.
The primary responsibility of parents is to teach their children what they need to know to be competent and confident adults. Many parents today don't do that. They leave that job to schools, even if they naively want to limit and control what the schools teach to the corporate model.
The situation today is not hopeless, as many believe. Change is possible, but only if people talk about it and find ways to teach new parents what they need to know about raising their children effectively and in a healthy manner.
When enough parents teach their own children properly, without leaving it to schools to do the job many parents abdicate, the school systems will eventually change.
Right now too many parents are too concerned about ensuring that the schools their children attend teach to the corporate model. We can talk about his situation until enough people understand how their minds have been manipulated and how the minds of their children are being molded in ways that are unhealthy for them and for the country.
Just 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 grow children who can think for themselves and who need a guide to show what to teach their kids and when.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian-born American economist (1908-2006)
Alas, Mr. Galbraith's statement bore more truth than even he may have realized.
First of all, a Canadian study a few years ago for McLeans magazine showed that only six percent of Canadian adults read more than three books per year. Considering that many people read books related to their work--indeed, must read them, such as medical doctors and other professionals, to stay up with advances in their respective fields--the number of people who read for pleasure, including those who read nonfiction simply to learn more, must be tragically small.
Although I have not seen similar studies relating to citizens of the USA or other western countries, I have no reason to believe that their reading rates would differ from those of Canadians.
Oh, we read, most of us. We read junk mail delivered to our homes, prodigious quantities of emails that serve us no good, internal memoes that usually mean nothing to us in our workplace and news in newspapers, magazines or on the internet. Those news sources that we choose ourselves tend to be biased, as all news sources are. The news sources we choose tend to all be biased in the same directions, preventing us from getting confused by a wide variety of opinions.
Thus we come to believe that our news sources present a fair and reasonable assessment of the news of the day. If our chosen news sources don't cover a story, it can't be important. Or we simply chose to believe that all other events are of lesser importance such that they don't deserve to breach our personal intellectual radars.
Thereby we funnel ourselves into comfortable grooves where we believe that most other people in the world think like ourselves. It may not be true, but we believe it's true, through practice and habit. Thus we come to take comfortably pretentious positions, as Galbraith noted.
When something that someone says or writes violates the sanctity of our cozy corner of thought, we think that person or organization must be on the fringe, likely dangerous because it might cause others to come around to its position. As we have persuaded ourselves that those who do not think like us are not "normal" or "average" or right, some of us feel it necessary to expunge the sources of such anti-social thought from public consciousness. We bitch and criticize and condemn.
We believe it is only right, indeed our duty, to prevent seditious thoughts from invading the minds of innocent people ("Save the children!") to the possible extent that others begin to think differently from us, in progressively larger numbers.
Eventually, the "we" referenced above get old, become disregarded by the younger generation in power, die off and join history as "those who thought differently in those bygone days." Some of them were strong supporters of slavery, believing that some people (always the social group to which they belonged) were naturally superior to others and had the right to treat them like pets or hunting prey.
The original aboriginal tribe of Newfoundland, Canada, for example, whose skin colour most likely resembled the "red skins" that Europeans began to call all natives of North America, were literally hunted into extinction, for sport. The unsociable Beotuk Indians had a habit of covering their exposed skin with red ochre, making them sufficiently different that Europeans thought they should be eliminated as a threat to social purity.
After that we had men who thought women so intellectually stupid that they should not have the right to vote, to equal pay for equal work, to be treated without abuse or to receive compensation if they were chucked out of their homes by their men (owners) who got tired of them.
Even today we have men in some western societies who believe that war is the only way to subjugate inferior peoples. Our leaders--who may be among these people--may tell lies to persuade enough voters to support going to war with ultra-sophisticated weapons and smart bombs against people who can only defend themselves with knives, rifles and stupid car bombs. Somehow there are still people who will believe that making war is the only and best route to peace.
You can see how pretentious the positions of such people must be, that they will believe the lies of the leaders who secured their positions in the first place by lying to those same people to get elected.
John Kenneth Galbraith, a brilliant man who believed his calling was to teach in a university and to write for university students and graduates, had no answers to the dilemma he posed in our quote. Yet there is a solution. And it's a simple one. And extraordinarily cheap.
Teach the children what we want them to know and to be able to think their way through pretentious and lying positions posed by others who want little more than to twist their minds into believing that their lives only have value if they do what their leaders tell them.
Our school systems are set up on a model that prepares young people to be the workers and consumers of the future. That is their whole purpose. And they do it well. But they don't have to teach creative and eager children to be dull automatons who simply do what their corporate employers want them to do and buy what they are told to buy in advertising.
The primary responsibility of parents is to teach their children what they need to know to be competent and confident adults. Many parents today don't do that. They leave that job to schools, even if they naively want to limit and control what the schools teach to the corporate model.
The situation today is not hopeless, as many believe. Change is possible, but only if people talk about it and find ways to teach new parents what they need to know about raising their children effectively and in a healthy manner.
When enough parents teach their own children properly, without leaving it to schools to do the job many parents abdicate, the school systems will eventually change.
Right now too many parents are too concerned about ensuring that the schools their children attend teach to the corporate model. We can talk about his situation until enough people understand how their minds have been manipulated and how the minds of their children are being molded in ways that are unhealthy for them and for the country.
Just 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 grow children who can think for themselves and who need a guide to show what to teach their kids and when.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, June 09, 2008
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
- 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
Thursday, May 29, 2008
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
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
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Intellectual Obesity And Information Diarrhea
The internet and technology associated with it have opened access to quantities of information unparalleled in human history. No emperor of Rome, monarch of the British Empire or ruler of any other empire has ever been able to acquire information the way anyone with a computer can today.
A friend wants to buy a garden tractor. He is able to research many different brands, compare quality and durability within brands of each manufacturer and among the various brands available on the market. Having selected a few for further research, he accesses several blogs and forums to learn about the experiences of users of each and gets warning about what to avoid. Then, trailer behind his van, he can pick up the best buy he has made by playing each seller against the others.
Not long ago I was contacted by a college student from Australia as a source for material she was researching on a topic on which I have expertise. Others, strangers every one and representing six different continents, have contacted me for information and advice about problems they have experienced. To them, I am accessible due to the internet.
However, this unprecedented access to information by millions of people comes at a cost. That cost is time, as a researcher must wade through mountains of information that is more advertising and propaganda than fact, and that takes time. Google can only point to sources, not to the most factual and succinct sources.
Children use the internet to learn about all sorts of topics. The media warn us about the dangers of pornography and adult web sites for kids. And they caution parents to monitor the activity of their children on social sites like Facebook.
But the media can't help children or parents to distinguish between factual information and political propaganda, religious come-ons, sites that outright lie about the products they sell, warranties on products they sell that aren't worth the paper they could be (but aren't) printed on, or "research" that could better be described as personal hobby than oriented to scientific method.
In short, the internet is the greatest source of trash information in human history.
Yet children and adults read this stuff. If it's well written, readers tend to become believers. Form, rather than factual substance, gives it street cred.
As television viewership declines, reading of material on web sites increases dramatically. This contributes to what retired Canadian educator Jim World calls intellectual obesity. Kids and adults can have heads crammed full of misinformation, trivia that may be attractive but serves them no good purpose (think the style and content of supermarket tabloids) and opinions-turned-beliefs on topics about which they have very limited verifiable facts.
In general, schools don't teach how to distinguish between facts, lies and propaganda, whether on the internet or on television. A small part of one course I took years ago focussed on political spin, editorialized news sources and propaganda. It may have been the best time I ever spent in school. Most people never get that experience, so they become prey for the wolves of the internet. Internet wolves know their sociology.
Humans being subject to human nature, the more they know, the more they want to tell others. Rumour and unsubstantiated fact has always been a part of human dialogue. But it could usually be distinguished as rumour and ignored or treated accordingly.
Today we have kids and adults who believe the most outrageous things because they read it on the internet. In North America, over half of all adults use the internet as their primary source for news and information. With a few rare exceptions, most of it is not subjected to scrutiny the way newspaper and television news reports are.
If US President George W. Bush could use newspapers, radio and television to spread lies about weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist in Iraq, then use the lies to start a war, what could happen when the unfiltered internet is used to brainwash people in every country of the world about the lies or misinformation its sources want to spread?
Don't call it information diarrhea if the term offends you. But let's not pretend that the internet is a source of verifiable facts. It's not. Most web sites are supported by companies or organizations with something (product or idea) to sell or individuals who want their ill-considered and often poorly formulated thoughts to be recorded for posterity.
Do we need more laws to protect us? No. The present plethora of unenforced and unenforceable laws on the books now prove that method doesn't work. More laws just make the bad guys get smarter to avert and avoid them.
The only way to protect people from misinformation and religious or political propaganda on a global scale is to teach children how to identify fact from fiction, truth from propaganda, sham from gem. That means changing part of the curriculum in high schools.
The other day I discussed with a friend the twice in my life that I have used skills I learned from two years of trigonometry in high school. I struggle today to comprehend how the average person could use calculus in their lives when they can't tell truth from lie, don't know how to think for themselves and believe everything that is carefully presented as if fact by a politician.
Being able to tell fact and truth from what is not is an essential life skill. If it's not taught in schools, most people will not learn it. They will be potential victims waiting to be victimized. This has always been true, but never more important than in this 21st century.
This world does not need any more victims or people who are too stupid to distinguish between truth and lies. We need to teach every child.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to make their children savvy about the ways of the world that could make them victims if they can't protect themselves.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
A friend wants to buy a garden tractor. He is able to research many different brands, compare quality and durability within brands of each manufacturer and among the various brands available on the market. Having selected a few for further research, he accesses several blogs and forums to learn about the experiences of users of each and gets warning about what to avoid. Then, trailer behind his van, he can pick up the best buy he has made by playing each seller against the others.
Not long ago I was contacted by a college student from Australia as a source for material she was researching on a topic on which I have expertise. Others, strangers every one and representing six different continents, have contacted me for information and advice about problems they have experienced. To them, I am accessible due to the internet.
However, this unprecedented access to information by millions of people comes at a cost. That cost is time, as a researcher must wade through mountains of information that is more advertising and propaganda than fact, and that takes time. Google can only point to sources, not to the most factual and succinct sources.
Children use the internet to learn about all sorts of topics. The media warn us about the dangers of pornography and adult web sites for kids. And they caution parents to monitor the activity of their children on social sites like Facebook.
But the media can't help children or parents to distinguish between factual information and political propaganda, religious come-ons, sites that outright lie about the products they sell, warranties on products they sell that aren't worth the paper they could be (but aren't) printed on, or "research" that could better be described as personal hobby than oriented to scientific method.
In short, the internet is the greatest source of trash information in human history.
Yet children and adults read this stuff. If it's well written, readers tend to become believers. Form, rather than factual substance, gives it street cred.
As television viewership declines, reading of material on web sites increases dramatically. This contributes to what retired Canadian educator Jim World calls intellectual obesity. Kids and adults can have heads crammed full of misinformation, trivia that may be attractive but serves them no good purpose (think the style and content of supermarket tabloids) and opinions-turned-beliefs on topics about which they have very limited verifiable facts.
In general, schools don't teach how to distinguish between facts, lies and propaganda, whether on the internet or on television. A small part of one course I took years ago focussed on political spin, editorialized news sources and propaganda. It may have been the best time I ever spent in school. Most people never get that experience, so they become prey for the wolves of the internet. Internet wolves know their sociology.
Humans being subject to human nature, the more they know, the more they want to tell others. Rumour and unsubstantiated fact has always been a part of human dialogue. But it could usually be distinguished as rumour and ignored or treated accordingly.
Today we have kids and adults who believe the most outrageous things because they read it on the internet. In North America, over half of all adults use the internet as their primary source for news and information. With a few rare exceptions, most of it is not subjected to scrutiny the way newspaper and television news reports are.
If US President George W. Bush could use newspapers, radio and television to spread lies about weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist in Iraq, then use the lies to start a war, what could happen when the unfiltered internet is used to brainwash people in every country of the world about the lies or misinformation its sources want to spread?
Don't call it information diarrhea if the term offends you. But let's not pretend that the internet is a source of verifiable facts. It's not. Most web sites are supported by companies or organizations with something (product or idea) to sell or individuals who want their ill-considered and often poorly formulated thoughts to be recorded for posterity.
Do we need more laws to protect us? No. The present plethora of unenforced and unenforceable laws on the books now prove that method doesn't work. More laws just make the bad guys get smarter to avert and avoid them.
The only way to protect people from misinformation and religious or political propaganda on a global scale is to teach children how to identify fact from fiction, truth from propaganda, sham from gem. That means changing part of the curriculum in high schools.
The other day I discussed with a friend the twice in my life that I have used skills I learned from two years of trigonometry in high school. I struggle today to comprehend how the average person could use calculus in their lives when they can't tell truth from lie, don't know how to think for themselves and believe everything that is carefully presented as if fact by a politician.
Being able to tell fact and truth from what is not is an essential life skill. If it's not taught in schools, most people will not learn it. They will be potential victims waiting to be victimized. This has always been true, but never more important than in this 21st century.
This world does not need any more victims or people who are too stupid to distinguish between truth and lies. We need to teach every child.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to make their children savvy about the ways of the world that could make them victims if they can't protect themselves.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, April 14, 2008
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
- 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
Monday, February 26, 2007
The Road To Success Leads Through Failure
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the toughest lessons to learn, especially for those who live in the western world, is that our bodies were designed to work hard, to struggle, to overcome. This does not set well with people who were raised on the belief that the easy life was ahead, that leisure was the way of the future. We were designed to overcome, but it isn't necessary that we overcome difficulties that we could easily have avoided.
Ease and leisure were never the way of the future, except in the minds of those whose intention was to profit from designing and producing products to sell to us using the hook that our lives will be easier. Did dishwashers, computers or televisions make our lives better, considering all of the consequences that resulted from their use?
Technology gives us the opportunity to learn more, to grow, to expand who we are. But it comes at a cost. In some cases, the cost has been obesity, broken marriages, families with two working parents who still can't make ends meet and kids who play video games at home because their parents feel it's too dangerous for them to be alone on the streets. True, those are not immediate consequences, but downstream results of life changes that resulted from using these "essential" technologies.
Emerson's point is that it's all right to make mistakes, to experiment and fail, because life is about experimenting. That means that more learning comes from failure than from success. We can accept one change without buying into a series of life changes that sometimes result from it.
Success brings an end to growth for many people, whereas each failure gives an opportunity to rebuild ourselves better than ever before. Setbacks are opportunities for those who know how to rebuild themselves. These are not skills that are widely taught in schools.
What we must be cautious about is experimenting with things that could have tragic consequences. Usually that requires us to investigate the consequences that have resulted from other people doing something we anticipate doing ourselves. If they have caused too much grief, the risk must be assessed before launching into the new venture.
An example would be people who experiment with taking drugs. In most cases, people who begin taking illegal drugs have been encouraged to do so by others who want company (or sales). Often the first experiments are free offerings. Tobacco companies have done this outside of schoolyards--mostly recently in some African countries--giving free cigarettes to children as young as six years. Kids only a couple of years older than that have been offered free street drugs. Kids don't know the downside of taking street drugs.
These children and even adolescents and adults who try street drugs have usually not been advised about how using them has destroyed the lives and the futures of many people who used the same drugs before them. Very few people will experiment with a drug if they have met someone whose life and family have been destroyed by drug use.
Many people would say that "Common sense should prevail." It should. However, common sense is not innate to us at birth. All common sense (if there be any such thing) is taught commonly, to all people, usually in childhood. People don't use common sense if they have not been taught how to apply themselves to a decision about experimenting with something new.
At the rate we can see from newspapers and lists such as the Darwin Awards that people have not used common sense, we must conclude that it has not been taught to every child. Walk through supermarket aisles and you might believe that almost none of the people you see have been taught the common sense rules of sharing space with others.
Common sense is a series of life skills that should be included in the curriculum of every school district. Every one of those skills is more important and more useful than any given bit of learning in chemistry, mathematics or language. Every one is usable by every person who knows it.
Experiment with life, yes, but do so with some degree of caution and research so that tragedy is not a certainty for the future.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make human needs a necessary part of learning for every child.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the toughest lessons to learn, especially for those who live in the western world, is that our bodies were designed to work hard, to struggle, to overcome. This does not set well with people who were raised on the belief that the easy life was ahead, that leisure was the way of the future. We were designed to overcome, but it isn't necessary that we overcome difficulties that we could easily have avoided.
Ease and leisure were never the way of the future, except in the minds of those whose intention was to profit from designing and producing products to sell to us using the hook that our lives will be easier. Did dishwashers, computers or televisions make our lives better, considering all of the consequences that resulted from their use?
Technology gives us the opportunity to learn more, to grow, to expand who we are. But it comes at a cost. In some cases, the cost has been obesity, broken marriages, families with two working parents who still can't make ends meet and kids who play video games at home because their parents feel it's too dangerous for them to be alone on the streets. True, those are not immediate consequences, but downstream results of life changes that resulted from using these "essential" technologies.
Emerson's point is that it's all right to make mistakes, to experiment and fail, because life is about experimenting. That means that more learning comes from failure than from success. We can accept one change without buying into a series of life changes that sometimes result from it.
Success brings an end to growth for many people, whereas each failure gives an opportunity to rebuild ourselves better than ever before. Setbacks are opportunities for those who know how to rebuild themselves. These are not skills that are widely taught in schools.
What we must be cautious about is experimenting with things that could have tragic consequences. Usually that requires us to investigate the consequences that have resulted from other people doing something we anticipate doing ourselves. If they have caused too much grief, the risk must be assessed before launching into the new venture.
An example would be people who experiment with taking drugs. In most cases, people who begin taking illegal drugs have been encouraged to do so by others who want company (or sales). Often the first experiments are free offerings. Tobacco companies have done this outside of schoolyards--mostly recently in some African countries--giving free cigarettes to children as young as six years. Kids only a couple of years older than that have been offered free street drugs. Kids don't know the downside of taking street drugs.
These children and even adolescents and adults who try street drugs have usually not been advised about how using them has destroyed the lives and the futures of many people who used the same drugs before them. Very few people will experiment with a drug if they have met someone whose life and family have been destroyed by drug use.
Many people would say that "Common sense should prevail." It should. However, common sense is not innate to us at birth. All common sense (if there be any such thing) is taught commonly, to all people, usually in childhood. People don't use common sense if they have not been taught how to apply themselves to a decision about experimenting with something new.
At the rate we can see from newspapers and lists such as the Darwin Awards that people have not used common sense, we must conclude that it has not been taught to every child. Walk through supermarket aisles and you might believe that almost none of the people you see have been taught the common sense rules of sharing space with others.
Common sense is a series of life skills that should be included in the curriculum of every school district. Every one of those skills is more important and more useful than any given bit of learning in chemistry, mathematics or language. Every one is usable by every person who knows it.
Experiment with life, yes, but do so with some degree of caution and research so that tragedy is not a certainty for the future.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make human needs a necessary part of learning for every child.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Grade School Can Be the Worst Thing That Happens to a Child
"It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don't. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever."
- Philip Adams, Australian broadcaster (1939- )
People have vast potential when they are given the opportunity as adults to show what they can do. Often they will surprise themselves. However they seldom get that chance.
Young children have vast potential as well. Some have the opportunity to demonstrate what they have while others are ignored or given little support for their efforts.
The biggest roadblock arrives when kids hit grade school.
Many of us think of grade school as a couple dozen happy children and one highly motivated teacher working together to develop the future of each child. That impression is wrong.
Grade school classes have curriculum to cover with only a limited number of days and hours to do it and very limited resources and supplies with which to accomplish their tasks. These constraints focus every child on limiting what they think about, limiting what they can accomplish outside that curriculum. Limited resources confine learning in many cases to what is in books and in the teacher's brain.
Computers help, but mostly if the classroom has enough competent adult assistants to guide the kids through the learning they need. That doesn't happen often enough.
Discipline problems result when children must slow down their natural instincts to learn huge quantities of information and produce fascinating results with it. In many cases, lessons require relative quiet with all attention on paperwork or on one speaker. The speaker in many cases is another child answering a question, someone who is no smarter or more knowledgeable than the many listeners.
Often someone who gives the wrong answers.
But each child must be given his time to be heard before the whole class. That's equality. Equality and curriculum come before anything else.
Except accountability. Tests--often many of them each week--assure that the teacher has taught the required curriculum and at least some of the children have taken in the lesson material. Testing, in effect, is an accountability factor for the teacher, not for the children.
Children will not learn if they have other things of greater importance to them on their minds. Problems with friends, at home, with hunger or with bullies on the street are but a few matters that any child considers more important than classroom lessons.
The school board cares nothing for these perceived childhood problems. Their focus is on results, test scores, measured progress along the line of the curriculum.
Thus the minds of most kids learn to focus on what the teacher wants, which is what the curriculum dictates. There is no time for much variation from the curriculum, except in better schools. In some schools, problems of the children require so much class time as a result of disruptions that lessons cannot be taught properly.
Schools have the answer to children with problems. They punish the kids. It's the way it has always been done. No one claims it makes any sense.
Most schools do not have the time or the approval of the community to teach the social and emotional (psychological) skills that kids with problems need.
So we have communities filled with adult followers who know little beyond what was on the curriculum in school, plus full jails and prisons, and medical offices lined with adults with problems they can't cope with.
Far too many people die with that vast potential they had within as children them still untapped.
And in most cases they never knew they had it in them.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to help schools grow competent and confident adults, not just kids who know how to take tests.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Philip Adams, Australian broadcaster (1939- )
People have vast potential when they are given the opportunity as adults to show what they can do. Often they will surprise themselves. However they seldom get that chance.
Young children have vast potential as well. Some have the opportunity to demonstrate what they have while others are ignored or given little support for their efforts.
The biggest roadblock arrives when kids hit grade school.
Many of us think of grade school as a couple dozen happy children and one highly motivated teacher working together to develop the future of each child. That impression is wrong.
Grade school classes have curriculum to cover with only a limited number of days and hours to do it and very limited resources and supplies with which to accomplish their tasks. These constraints focus every child on limiting what they think about, limiting what they can accomplish outside that curriculum. Limited resources confine learning in many cases to what is in books and in the teacher's brain.
Computers help, but mostly if the classroom has enough competent adult assistants to guide the kids through the learning they need. That doesn't happen often enough.
Discipline problems result when children must slow down their natural instincts to learn huge quantities of information and produce fascinating results with it. In many cases, lessons require relative quiet with all attention on paperwork or on one speaker. The speaker in many cases is another child answering a question, someone who is no smarter or more knowledgeable than the many listeners.
Often someone who gives the wrong answers.
But each child must be given his time to be heard before the whole class. That's equality. Equality and curriculum come before anything else.
Except accountability. Tests--often many of them each week--assure that the teacher has taught the required curriculum and at least some of the children have taken in the lesson material. Testing, in effect, is an accountability factor for the teacher, not for the children.
Children will not learn if they have other things of greater importance to them on their minds. Problems with friends, at home, with hunger or with bullies on the street are but a few matters that any child considers more important than classroom lessons.
The school board cares nothing for these perceived childhood problems. Their focus is on results, test scores, measured progress along the line of the curriculum.
Thus the minds of most kids learn to focus on what the teacher wants, which is what the curriculum dictates. There is no time for much variation from the curriculum, except in better schools. In some schools, problems of the children require so much class time as a result of disruptions that lessons cannot be taught properly.
Schools have the answer to children with problems. They punish the kids. It's the way it has always been done. No one claims it makes any sense.
Most schools do not have the time or the approval of the community to teach the social and emotional (psychological) skills that kids with problems need.
So we have communities filled with adult followers who know little beyond what was on the curriculum in school, plus full jails and prisons, and medical offices lined with adults with problems they can't cope with.
Far too many people die with that vast potential they had within as children them still untapped.
And in most cases they never knew they had it in them.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to help schools grow competent and confident adults, not just kids who know how to take tests.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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