The Movie That Changed My Life, And May Change The World

The Movie That Changed My Life, And May Change The World
If you plan for one year, plant rice.
If you plan for ten years, plant trees.If you plan for 100 years, educate mankind.
- Chinese proverb

1967 proved a banner year for young movie star Sidney Poitier, with three major films in a single year to his credit. The least popular movie at the time was the British school flick To Sir, With Love. The song of the same name, sung by Scottish actor/singer Lulu hit number 1 on the US pop Billboard charts and was rated the best pop single of 1967 by billboard.
While the music of the song was spectacular (I could have lived in Dreamland with that song), its lyrics may have ruined the extremely important message made by the film. "How can you thank someone who has taken you from crayons to perfume" made parents believe the movie was about a lovesick teenage girl who had a crush on her teacher, and who needed another one of those? Are teachers really teaching about perfume in school?
The movie took place in an East London high school where the senior class wanted nothing more than to get out of school and find jobs. The curriculum had so little bearing on their future (Denham: "I've me own barra when I'm finished here") that disruption of class became their primary objective in life. New teacher Mark Thackeray (Poitier) had no more success than his predecessors. Those kids were more misbehaved than any teacher deserves. They took in nothing of the lessons anyone taught.
Then Thackeray had an inspiration. Denham needed to know more about life than just how to conduct business from a fruit and vegetable stand (barrow). They needed life skills. When he changed his teaching from "This is the grammar and arithmetic the school wants me to teach you" to a "This is what you need to know to get through each day of your life" style, he had their attention. The misbehaviour stopped like magic. Of course it worked out beautifully, it was a movie. But its message was critically important for me then and it's critically important for each of us today. (I became a teacher and studied the sociology of education.)
No child starts out life wanting to be antisocial, to be a misfit. Before anything else, they want to know what they need to get through their lives. They want to know what problems they will face as they get older and how to cope with them. They want to know how to make friends, how to patch up broken friendships, how to find a mate, how to act with a boyfriend or girlfriend, what skills they need to know in their heads in order to survive the working world. They need to know the survival skills of adulthood.
To most kids, social and emotional needs take precedence over intellectual needs and sports. If they can't find answers to their questions on these subjects, they can't bring themselves to care about the school curriculum. They don't care much about learning to read if their parents fight at home every night. Sometimes they know inherently that they need something, but don't know what. They expect their parents or teachers to provide that information without their having to ask. When it doesn't come, they object. They misbehave. They bully. They steal. They take drugs. They do whatever they can to make up for the lack that has turned into a permanent hurt.
They are broken. Why try to fix broken people if you can prevent them from breaking in the first place?
To Sir, With Love
Still, in most school jurisdictions, curriculum remains mired in the 19th century. Discipline is worse than ever before. The admonishment to "return to the basics" has failed. The basics of life are not reading, writing and arithmetic, but life skills. If you don't know how to cope with your problems, what good will it do to know the rules of grammar or how to do trigonometry? What good is a job with high pay if half or more of it goes to the spouse you couldn't manage to live with because you didn't know how?
The students who were in high school in the late 1960s and succeeding decades have become adults and now constitute the main constituency that operate our companies, that elect our political leaders, that make decisions that affect our lives. When the most common medical prescription in the USA is Prozac and use of marijuana and alcohol has become so pervasive that they can't be evaded at parties and social gatherings of all sorts, we must wonder if our schools are teaching what the future adults who run everything really need. When we examine the politics of the USA, Egypt, Israel, Sudan, Russia, China, Indonesia and many other countries, we must ask ourselves if we are teaching what kids really need. If we taught what they need, they wouldn't mess up their lives so badly.
The world is indeed a messy place to live. At this time we have little choice but to live in the mess. But it doesn't have to remain a mess.
The means and opportunities to correct our problems are in our schools. We elect the people who set school curriculum. We can make changes if we speak up about them.
As always, if we leave it to others to make decisions for us, they will make decisions that will benefit them more than the rest of us. Change happens at the ballot box. That kind of change can only happen when we all help to inform others about what is needed. Spread the word.
Education is your affair, not something you leave to leaders of industry and political parties.
Speak up. Talk to others. Forward this article to other people you believe might care.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for changing school curriculum and teaching by parents that will help make the 21st century the one that finally gets it right. Kids matter and this book teaches us how to make that work for all of us.
Learn more at was far from the last attempt the film industry made to try to turn school curriculum away from traditional lessons that kids know they will never use to material that every one can and will use in their lives. Why Shoot the Teacher?, The Principal, Conrack, Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me, Teachers, Dead Poets Society, Dangerous Minds, Mr. Holland's Opus, Music of the Heart, Take the Lead, Freedom Writers, The Ron Clark Story and Sister Act 2 picked up on the same theme.Turning It Around makes clear proposals that will prevent kids from breaking, from becoming social problems for their communities and heartaches for their parents. The book has answers, solutions that are virtually without cost, but require some changes in what teachers are allowed to teach, what they are allowed to tell the kids whose futures are in their hands.http://billallin.com

Grandpa Said A Naughty Word

Grandpa Said A Naughty Word


[My young daughter] Sophie was sitting on my lap at Grandpa's the other day. As Grandpa was talking to Grandma, he says "Oh, I hate that goddamn show." Sophie looks up at me and whispers, "Ooooh, Grandpa said HATE... that's a naughty word!"
- David Lauer, American father and advocate for good parenting

Four-year-old Sophie had no idea of the significance of her simple heart-felt observation. Her father may have, or he may have thought of the irony of what she said as funny. Sophie's words were hugely important and I will explain why.

First let me take you back many years to a family gathering in Canada. Three generations had gathered for a family dinner on a Sunday evening. The grandson listens to the conversation quietly--having nothing to contribute anyway--as the custom then was for children to be "seen but not heard." The boy has nothing else to do but listen and learn.

The grandmother told stories that took place in the Great Depression, which was not long past. Grandmother and grandfather had survived the Depression in comfort as they owned property as well as a bakery and a grocery store. The grandmother told of many incidents where people without money or food would come to the grocery store asking for handouts. Each was given something.

One feature of most stories was an observation about the cleanliness of the people coming into the store to beg for food. They were usually not clean, the grandmother observed, neglecting to mention whether or not these people might have had access to soap and water, or even a place to live. The child, having no reference other than his own personal experience, thought there must be many dirty people around. He always had access to water and soap.

One story involved a man with dark skin, unusual in those days in a basically all-white city. When grandmother tucked "dirty" and the "N-word" into a sentence in passing, the young grandson exploded. "Oh, Nana, shut up" is all he said. He knew the words of his grandmother hurt someone who could not defend himself. He knew enough to say no more and knew he could not take back what was already out and festering.

The lad was severely reprimanded, isolated from the others present at the time and promised further punishment when the younger family got home. The "sin" had been the boy telling his grandmother to shut up, not the grandmother's expression of racism. Apparently, in that setting and that time, telling a racist relative to shut up was the greater offence. Especially if one of the offenders was a child. And the other a financial benefactor to the younger family.

The grandmother, I should mention--my own grandmother--never again expressed a word that was racist or prejudiced. I can't remember if I was punished at home later, but it would not have mattered to me. I could not listen to prejudice as if it didn't matter, even as a young lad. I felt hurt by words intended to hurt others.

Why? My parents never said or taught me anything about racism or prejudice. My only entertainment in those days was the radio. In the mid-1940s, after the Second World War and before his untimely death, I heard many audio clips of Mohandas Gandhi, fondly known by almost everyone as "The Mahatma" (Great Soul). Gandhi, born into a Hindu family, grieved as untold numbers of Hindus and Muslims died at each others hands during the migrations between India and Pakistan at the time of independence from Britain. However, he managed single handedly to prevent more slaughter than the Brits could ever avoid by speaking words of peace to the Muslims of Bengal.

The Mahatma was a man of peace, a man who put his life on the line many times in the cause of peace, understanding and respect among all people. I learned more from Gandhi than I did from my biological father. His words guided my life when my parents provided no words of guidance. Gandhi was the parent I learned from as a young child and that learning shaped who I became and what I did with my life.

Someone taught Sophie well. She knew, without thinking, that even using the word "hate" was wrong, while never giving a thought to her grandfather's "taking the Lord's name in vain." While there is virtually no evidence that "the Lord" would take offence at the grandfather's statement, the books that profess to express the Lord's wishes all say that hatred is wrong.

More significantly, Sophie had been taught this life lesson about values and mutual human respect before she was old enough to begin her formal education. That lesson will shape her life.

Someone was parenting right. Note also from the quote that Sophie was on her father's lap. Touching (the loving kind) is another critically important experience in a parent-child relationship. Not only is she receiving good parenting today, she will pass these good skills along to her children when that time arrives. She will "pay it forward" and never realize why. Many will benefit later, though few will know the background story as you do.

My friends, this is the kind of good news, of world-saving news, that our news media never report. This small incident happened in one American household. It is likely happening also in many, many more. The world needs to know.

You know these lessons about parenting. Pass them on. Kids learn about life from the people they live with before they ever begin school. Schools are not empowered or directed to teach life lessons. Young adults need to know this. They need us to do what we can to teach them.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers about what and when to teach children to assist with their social and emotional development as well as their intellectual and physical development.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/

How Public Schools Fail Us Tragically

How Public Schools Fail Us Tragically

"The social, emotional and spiritual are part of a child's connection with the world."
- Mary Paradis, director of development at the Vancouver Waldorf School

Why doesn't every child deserve the kind of education kids get at some private schools? The schools I refer to--Waldorf and Montessori are among them--teach the whole child, not just curriculum dictated facts and skills.

Children develop along four main streams: intellectual, physical, emotional and social. Mainline school systems address the intellectual and physical needs of their children, but curriculum seldom leaves time or room for social or emotional/psychological development. At that, intellectual development follows strict guides and physical development varies hugely from school to school and among various districts.

What would those strict guides be that schools follow? Education systems, in general, are designed to produce future employees who can do the jobs that big employers such as industries need to be done. And they produce consumers who will buy, use, throw away, then buy more of the products those industries manufacture.

Schools produce employees and consumers. The evidence is so glaring that those who argue against the claim have difficulty finding evidence of support. In fact, those who argue that schools are not designed to produce employees and consumers of the future delude themselves and try to persuade others so they don't feel so alone. If you doubt, just look at what topics fill school curricula and the young adults the schools produce.

Ironically, many of the leaders of the industries that employ public school system graduates themselves attended private schools. Is this true irony? In fact, no. Private schools, in general, prepare children to be leaders in their communities, not followers as public school systems do.

Providing "the right thing at the right time" in a child's learning development is the key to teaching to the whole child, according to Ryan Lindsay, president of The Waldorf Association of Ontario. Public schools, on the other hand, provide indoctrination of facts and skills in the employee-consumer model at the time most child have the ability to manage them. Those who are not ready fail--emotionally, if not by repeating school years--drop out when they reach the minimum age, often believing that they are too dumb for school. They try to work for large companies so they can depend on a steady income.

"We make sure we focus on teaching children how to think and not what to think," according to Lindsay. "We like to think we are laying the foundation in a more thorough way so that when children get to a certain age the approach aids their intellectual development."

Casting aside the lack of expertise you may feel regarding the topic of education as a whole, if you attended a public school do Mr. Lindsay's statements ring a bell about how you were taught? From what you know of adults today, do they know how to think, not just what to think when they make purchases?

We must keep in mind that private schools have the same number of teaching hours in their days as public schools. They don't have eight-day school weeks. Private school students are in class roughly the same number of hours as public school students the same age. Sometimes less if they have special assignments that take them outside the classroom.

What's the difference?

Some may claim that public schools have many more problem children to deal with than private schools. From my personal experience as an educator, I can see that argument having some merit. I also know that classes I taught in public schools had far fewer "problem children" than many of the other classes in the same schools.

In my teaching years in public schools, it was the teacher in my classes who kept getting into trouble, not the students. In my case I kept wanting to deliver to my kids what they needed and wanted and were desperate to take in and develop, not just what was on the curriculum. I believe my mission was to grow whole people, not just adults who were ready to be employees and consumers. I did. Administration often objected.

In general, classes with "problem children" do little to address their emotional and social needs. Consequently their problems tend to be emotional or social in nature--bullying, depression, fighting, shyness and so on. Where children have intellectual development problems--slow learners--very often the slowness of intellectual development relates back to emotional or social problems of the past.

And often to emotional or social problems of the present. How efficiently can we expect a child to learn if he or she has problems with a drunk or abusive parent at home, with a classmate or neighbourhood child who bullies them to and from school or on the bus, with a parent who does not provide a home atmosphere that supports what is taught at school, or even with the results of a recently broken close friendship?

For a child, emotional and social problems always take precedence over intellectual challenges in school. Always. It's how we are built. Emotional and social problems are related to our individual ability--our basic instinct--to survive. For our ancient prehistoric ancestors, intellectual development and learning took place when survival and personal safety and comfort were not at stake.

Most private schools address the social and emotional needs of their students. "I could never say enough good things about the value of community in a school," says Karen Murton, principal of Branksome Hall, a private school for girls in Toronto.

If a child can't get enough help with social or emotional development at home and his school doesn't have the time or the authority in its curriculum to address these needs, where does he get it, where does he turn to fill in the blanks he knows inherently he must fill? Television. Movies. Video games. Rumours picked up in casual conversations with peers. "Information" gleaned from overheard adult conversations behind closed doors and at parties.

Please consider that list carefully. Your child, or at least many of the children in your community, derive most of the emotional and social development information they receive from these same sources. Are they the sources you want young people to take as models? Think about their content.

Public schools could provide factual input, but most don't. They have the same amount of time with their students as private schools, but public schools spend their non-curriculum time dealing with created problems rather than teaching what the kids need to know to prevent them from happening.

One kind of school deals with kids who may already be broken. Another teaches what kids need to avoid breaking.

As astonishing as it may sound, addressing the emotional and social needs of children would not be a costly change for public schools. Most teachers already know this stuff and just need some direction, guidance and the authority to teach it.

If private schools can grow men and women who can lead major industries, professions and governments, public schools should easily be able to grow men and women who can think for themselves, who are more than mere automaton employees and consumers who work and buy as they are told.

If you believe what you have just read, then your family, your community, your world needs you to speak up about it. Only by speaking up will you find how many others think like you so that we can all work together to make life better for the future.

If we don't talk about this, we leave industries to manipulate their way into the lives of every student of every public school.

That's simply not acceptable.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, teachers and other interested people who want to know what children need to learn and when, not just what industries want them to be taught and how.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

When Should Children Be Taught Certain Facts and Skills?

When Should Children Be Taught Certain Facts and Skills?

In response to an article I wrote recently about teaching information, facts and skills to children much earlier than most adults think is advisable and possible, one of my readers wrote to ask me to elaborate on the "when." When to teach children what is a critically important question, yet one that is seldom asked.
The following was my reply to her.
............................

Many adults believe that timing of information given to children is extremely important. They think that if the timing of wrong, it may harm the child's mind or morals. This is wrong in every possible way.

Teaching a child about drugs, for example, does not open the possibility that the child will adopt the taking of drugs. The whole purpose of teaching the child about drugs is to inform them about what harm can come to them by taking drugs other than under the supervision of a medical professional. Teaching a child about sex between man and woman does not encourage the child to experiment with sex prematurely. Despite these widespread beliefs, there is no evidence that early teaching about drugs, sex or any other matter that a parent should be teaching to a child affects the mind or body of the child as a result of being taught prematurely.

Despite parent supervision of internet use by children, the truth is that this is impossible. Kids are resourceful and will find ways to circumvent restrictions by the parents. One way, for example, is simply to visit a friend's house, someone who does not suffer such restrictions. In other words, information on every possible subject is available on the internet. However, some of this information is wrong and some (in its wrongness) does harm. Consider how many adults have been fooled by urban legends and so-called Nigeria scams.

A parent should be teaching life skills about all subjects when a child is young. How young is too young? You know your timing is wrong when the child shows no interest in the subject, gets distracted easily. THAT is the only criterion for premature teaching. The child, not the parent, should choose when he or she is ready to learn about a subject.

Innocence in children is admirable if you want them to never grow up. But they do. Children who have been kept innocent by their parents tend to become ignorant adults. Ignorant adults don't know what to do and when to do it. They have few coping skills when life throws them a bad curve, such as a personal assault on their person, a home invasion, divorce or death of a loved one.

Children learn about life in the womb, even before they are born. They have the ability to learn a language (a sophisticated and complex cognitive process) even before they can walk. Studies show that children study language before they even have the ability to make use of that learning through their own speech. Children have the ability to understand the most complex information we can give them at a shockingly early age.

If mistakes are make with early teaching, they would be with the adult, not with the child. The adult (usually parent) might not teach well for the learning style of the child. Imagine a parent using the lecture style of a university professor with a child of two years. No matter how fact filled the lecture might be, the child will not be interested because young children learn by doing more than by listening. They learn language by listening, but that has an incentive because the child wants to participate in family conversations. For most matters to be learned early by a child, they can learn is easier by doing something.

I most cases, children learn while they play. Play is their form of work. A parent can teach a child in the context of play. Make it a fun and enjoyable situation. Because kids want to learn, teaching them something that is given them as if imparting a secret is also a fun learning style. They often want to believe that they know something other kids don't. And they should be in that situation at least once in a while.

Let's take a teaching example. How many facts might a parent possibly teach a child about sex? Let's say 50 facts. A child of three years has no need for or use for 50 facts about sex. The child will not be interested in learning 50 facts. But he might be interested in learning a few of them. It stops being fun for a child to learn when the learning becomes memorization. A child has learning limits. Those limits are more of total accumulation at any given time than of their ability to understand something.

How many lies do parents tell their children so that they can avoid teaching them the truth? A parent may tell a child that a new baby is delivered by a stork or an angel from heaven. The child will know that is wrong. The child sees the mother grow in the belly, then return from the hospital, with baby in arms, much thinner. Which does more harm, telling the child that babies begin with the joining of sex organs (every kid has a set) of mother and father, or telling the child a lie? Believe me, telling the lie to a young child makes the child mistrust information from the parent.

A lie told to a child by a parent, no matter what the intent of the parent, is a lie to the child, a lie that undermines the trust the child has in the most important adult in his or her life. A "white lie" is a lie and it's understood as a lie by the child.

The message a child learns from a lie by his parent, no matter what the nature of the lie, is "I'm a bad parent who can't cope with teaching you the truth, so I am making up this lie. We're stuck with each other, so live with it." Children recognize lies and diversionary tactics far more readily than most adults realize. They don't know what to make of a lie, what to do about the fact that their most important source of information about life has lied to them. The child will still love the parent, but trust between them will have been undermined.

Children can handle truth at any age, even as young as age one year. No child knows what to do with a lie told by a parent, no matter how well intentioned it was. A child's life revolves around trust, and since the young child's life revolves around parents, for a parent to lie to a child to avoid telling the truth helps to destroy that environment of trust between them. It shatters the child's life.

Bad parenting does far more harm to children than teaching them too early has ever done.
Please consider these thoughts carefully. Put them into action yourself and tell other people you know. There is nothing private about this information. You and they are not too young to learn. Nor too old. There is no young age limit to learning just as there is no upper age limit.
Invite others you tell to join our group.

Children, more than adults, are built to learn. They are learning factories. Young children process an alarming amount of information daily, far more than adults do and far more than most adults realize.

Do not hesitate to write back with more questions.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to know when, what and how to teach critically important information and skills to children so that they can grow up healthy and truly well balanced.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

ADHD: You or Someone You Love Could Have It and Not Know It

ADHD: You or Someone You Love Could Have It and Not Know It

My sister had Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) all her life and took it to her grave. I might have had it, but a strange trick of fate at birth caused me to have its opposite. A nephew had all the indicators for ADHD when he was a baby, but his mother sidetracked him from it and he may grow to be a genius as a result.

Before going further, we must establish a few ground rules about discussing ADHD. First, nothing about the human brain is well understood. Nothing about it can be diagnosed and cured or changed easily. Nobody is an expert on the human brain and no one should be believed because he or she claims to have such expertise. We should listen to all points of view before making decisions. This article makes no claims to perfection, it seeks to present a different point of view about a seemingly intractable problem.

However, if we look at ADHD from a different point of view, we may find that it's not the problem that is intractable but our approach that doesn't allow us to see the problem for what it really is.
Nothing about the human brain is cast in stone in terms of being inevitable or unchangeable. Medical hypotheses about the brain have almost always turned out to be wrong. They changed, they evolved, but they were wrong at first. Even now, after extensive research having been conducted for several decades, no one can say anything about the human brain with absolute certainty.

It's easier to prove the existence of God and the non-existence of good science than it is to make definitive and irrefutable statements about the human brain. I have done both--at least to my own satisfaction--yet the brain continues to mystify me and the "expert" statements about it stagger my imagination. Some, I am convinced are just plain wrong.

How, then, do I dare to write an article about one of the great brain mysteries of our time, ADHD? Because when we look at the situation from a non-conventional perspective--one we should be using but don't--ADHD is not a brain problem but a problem of social inadequacy. And, if I may be so candid, social ignorance.

ADHD may indeed be shown to be different from other brain conditions in the sense that those who suffer from it may have brain structure that differs slightly from that of those who don't have ADHD. And ADHD may be shown to have family connections. But it may begin with an inadequate start at intellectual development of a child, not with a physiological difference. In adequate intellectual develop and opportunities for young children may very well run in families without a genetic connection.

Parents who do not know or understand the intellectual needs of a very young child, who may not therefore address the child's early intellectual development, may pass these inadequate parenting skills along to their own children. Most young parents learn most of what they know about parenting from their experiences with their own parents. "I lived through it, so I can do it myself."

Named for its symptoms rather than its discoverer (Alzheimer, Hodgkin) or its genetic markers (H5N1, H1N1), ADHD is a collection of behaviours by which its sufferers are identified. Wikipedia describes ADHD as a "neurobehavioral developmental disorder," which is psychobabble for what it further describes as "persistent pattern of inattention or hyperactivity—impulsivity that is more frequently displayed and more severe than is typically observed in individuals at a comparable level of development." More psychobabble.

What does it mean? Psychobabble is simply babble used by self described experts to make the uninitiated believe that they know what they are talking about when they really don't. ADHD, then, is the term given to people (mostly to children because most adults with the problem have learned to cope with it by hiding the condition) who exhibit behaviours that are unacceptable in normal social settings. Normal social settings would include a school classroom, at home with siblings or parents, during a quiet church service, in public at the checkout counter of a supermarket, even trying to sit quietly to read. Rarely, ADHD children can even be dangerous to others or themselves, such as when "out of control" behaviour is punished.

A child who is punished for demonstrating socially inappropriate behaviour in a social setting may become outraged at the thought of being punished for something he believes is not his fault.

When a child is "out of control," it should be taken as a sign that the parent has no idea what the child needs rather than that the child is "just plain bad." Punishing an out of control child is like punishing a slave for his master's failures. Abolishing slavery didn't make abuse go away and punishing either parent or child will not end the problem. Especially when neither parent nor child understands what the problem is.

Most parents teach their children to behave in social settings. Training children about how to behave in public so that they do not stand out as abnormal is part of what every parent tries to accomplish with their children. It's called socialization. Parents and teachers of children "with" ADHD usually fail. As so many adults fail in these efforts, child development specialists name the child as having an affliction, with a name, because blaming so many parents and teachers for failing to teach their children would bring wrath upon the specialists.

Social scientists and practitioners know that to blame a parent for something the parent knew nothing about, including knowing nothing about how to cope with a situation they didn't understand in the first place, is a dangerous road.

As is the case so often with "unacceptable" human behaviours (that is, socially unacceptable), children with ADHD come to be labelled as problem children, children with behavioural problems, even "bad seeds," kids who have some strange, poorly understood and badly managed illness. It's easier to blame kids because they can't fight back or defend themselves as parents can and do.

Though ADHD has three subtypes, primarily too impulsive, primarily lacking in ability to give attention to situations in their environment, or a combination, most kids with ADHD are identified as fussy, fidgety and flighty. The quick-fix for adults is to claim the kids have a problem, give the problem a name, then recommend drug therapy. Ever since amphetamines lost their panache as a drug of choice for recreational use (known as speed) in the 1960s, they have gained new life within the medical community with names such as Ritalin (methylphenidate).

Ritalin and other medications prescribed by pediatricians calm kids. They make the kids more "normal," meaning they dull the brain so much the behaviours of the children make them less distinguishable from others of their peers who do not have a problem with exhibiting socially unacceptable behaviour. In the case of ADHD kids, drugs accomplish what social training by parents and grandparents does with most children, make them behave in public or in a social situation.

This is where my proposal differs from the most commonly used treatments for ADHD. Rather than using drugs or other therapies in an attempt to make ADHD kids more "normal," I propose that we raise the level and style of education to match their needs. ADHD children "misbehave" because they find themselves like caged animals in their intellectual development. Give them what they require in their own peculiar intellectual development stream and they will act more like "normal" kids.

Children develop in four main ways: intellectually, physically, socially and emotionally (psychologically). Put a few kids together and give them a little space and they will devise games that have a physical component and usually a social component (in their interaction). They develop emotionally or psychologically by making their way through problems, conflicts and hurts, often with the help of adults.

Most kids will incorporate some sort of intellectual component in their play. With simple games such as hide and seek, it's figuring out how to reach "home" without being discovered in their chosen hiding place. With tag, it's how to stay away from the person who is "it" and how to tag someone else when it's their own turn to be "it." That's problem solving, an important intellectual skill. Some children require more than the usual amount of intellectual stimulation.

What might someone you recognize as a genius have been like as a child? Say, Albert Einstein, as an example. Could Einstein possibly have been a normal kid at the age of four, unrecognizable from others his own age? His brain could not possibly have developed rapidly when he reached university age such that he moved to Switzerland to suddenly understand relativity and special relativity. He had to have been different as a young child as well. He must have behaved differently from other kids, as pretty well all kids who grow to be outstanding adults did.

On one occasion I remember reading a statement that Einstein believed each child is born with genius, but we train it out of most of them within their first few years of life. Sorry, I have not been able to find the actual wording of the statement, or even to confirm that Einstein made it. When you think about it, that is not the kind of statement of truth we might want to popularize because it would destroy much of what we have come to believe is good parenting and good educating. We don't want to believe we intentionally or knowingly make kids dumb. In general, western thought believes that children are born dumb (not just without knowledge) and parents and teachers smarten them up as they grow and mature.

Einstein's brain was different from the brains of most people. Larger? No, it was actually a bit smaller than the average, at 2.9 pounds. However, his brain, as examined after his death (it was removed from his body a few hours after his ultimate breath) was structured differently. I submit that Einstein's brain developed differently from the brains of most people according to the stimulus he received as a child and adolescent, not due to accidents of nature. Today we know of brain plasticity, of the ability of people to retrain their brains at any age, even in old age, of the brain's ability to restructure itself at any time if the stimulus is right.

A brain, if stimulated with new and novel thoughts and habits, will grow new neural connections, even in non-conventional parts of the brain. People blind from birth, for example, have the optical parts of their brains taken over with uses and thinking involving the other senses. A blind person may not be able to hear better than a sighted person, but he may be able to process more incoming sound information than the average sighted person. The brain of an older person can change shape with new and repeated intellectual activity just as much as that of a teenager, though the teen's brain usually changes shape faster. That's brain plasticity.

The stimulus for intellectual development was right for Albert Einstein as a child. He would not be labelled as a child with ADHD today because his intellectual needs in early childhood were met. It's behaviour, not physiology, that causes kids to be labelled as having ADHD. The brain may change shape and create new neural networks based on repeated experiences and habits of a child whose intellectual development is impeded, thus creating a child "with" ADHD.

If this is true, then we should be able to change conditions for fussy children so they will be intellectually fulfilled, so they won't need to be fussy. So they can be as intellectually blessed earlier in life as some grow to be as adults.

The intellectual needs of some children in their early years are not met sufficiently. What could a child do about that? The kid can't express his need because he has not developed the intellectual capacity to understand it. Human kids even have trouble expressing their need for touch from their parents, a critically important component of their emotional development, so it's no surprise they couldn't express their need for more intellectual stimulation.

So they fuss. And they fidget. And sometimes they fight. They can't follow the painfully slow teaching style in their classroom, so they quickly become distracted. If there is nothing to interest them intellectually nearby, they devise ways to involve others. They misbehave. At home, they have the same environment day after day, which they come to think of as boring, so they act out. They scream, they pound, they send us signals we misinterpret. We think they should just "be good." Like we adults are.

What would you do if your brain were imprisoned, such as if you became a quadriplegic who couldn't speak? Some people say they would rather die than to live in a body that would not allow them to speak, to write, to communicate, even to move. A child doesn't consider dying because he doesn't even have a clear understanding about what living is yet. He just feels frustrated and anxious. So he acts the way he feels. That is very uncomfortable and anxious.

Fussing, fighting and acting out at least get him attention, which may not be as satisfying as good intellectual stimulation but it's something different, a change from boring.

We in the 21st century still believe that babies are born stupid and only learn to be smarter as they approach adulthood. The same way they develop physically. That way of thinking is wrong. In fact, it's backwards.

In the first six years of life, a child's brain acts like an enormous sponge--even a vacuum cleaner--soaking up everything, absolutely everything it can. Good stuff, bad stuff, everything, because it can't distinguish good from bad, useful from useless. For the most part, a child's intellectual development in their first six years is left up to young parents who have extremely little knowledge about what a child needs and how it develops. Babies don't get a chance to choose their parents. A young child's brain may not have much experience or knowledge, but it's supercharged for intellectual learning experiences.

Why did my sister, who grew up in a similar family environment as I did, develop ADHD? Half a century ago, a child growing up in a relatively unstimulating environment needed more, but had no way to get it. In our family there were no books, no reading to them by a parent, no television (at least of the kind that would be intellectually stimulating for a child), not even access to radio programs that were not geared to adult interests. My sister had such constant needs for intellectual stimulation that were never met that her brain automatically jumped from one focus to another seeking fulfillment. She didn't "apply herself" people said, her teachers repeated on report cards.

The closest she got in her 54 years of life to intellectual fulfillment was when she acted in several musical plays in senior elementary school. She was very good, quite talented, but she received no encouragement, no praise, no support from home. She never grasped how to move to the next stage with what she had learned. No one taught her. As she got older, she accepted an addiction as a substitute, as an emotional surrogate to intellectual excitement, in her case smoking cigarettes. Eventually it killed her, as it did our father and mother. Maybe it wasn't the addiction that was genetic, but the common condition of lacking intellectual stimulation at the right times.

Why did I, who grew up in the same environment--in fact with absolutely no intellectual stimulation for my first six years--not develop ADHD? For reasons still unclear, my brain had a problem processing information, right from birth. Maybe it was a lack of oxygen from blood not reaching my brain for the short period of time it took me to be born breech. (Some claim I have been ass-backwards ever since.) Maybe I inherited a condition whereby my brain functioned much slower than those of other babies. To this day I think and write slowly. I know the condition existed in my father's family.

My brain worked so slowly as a child that I had time to invent, to create, to use my imagination. With never a toy, a child or even a parent to play with, at the age of three I created an imaginary pet. As the only animals I knew were those I saw on the rare occasions I was taken out of our apartment over a store in a lonely farming community--in my case the animals I saw were cattle--I adopted an imaginary cow. The earliest memory I have of my father making a pronouncement about me was when he whispered to my mother that he thought I must be retarded because I had an imaginary pet. What else did my brain have to do but to imagine? He didn't know and didn't realize that it was a problem he should have addressed. A problem I addressed as best I could. I managed to invent a friend and intellectual stimulation.

How about my nephew, son of my wife's sister, the kid who should have developed ADHD but didn't? I remember watching (and listening to) this kid scream at the top of his lungs at the age of 10 months. He was learning to walk. Every time he stood up for a few seconds, he would lose his balance as he let go of a chair and fall down. He hated that. Most babies just keep at it until they master the skills of standing unsupported and walking. My nephew screamed because he was frustrated with himself. He knew he could learn how to walk, but the secret of balance eluded him. He had something important to learn, but he couldn't do it. He despised the fact that he was being held back by his own uncoordinated body.

I told his mother that he was just angry with himself because he couldn't master what he wanted to do, what everyone he knew could do, walk. She knew he was extraordinarily eager to learn. She and her husband fed the intellectual needs of their son admirably. Today, with full support and guidance from home whenever he needs it, the lad gets school awards, wins at sports, succeeds at everything he attempts. He knows he needs intellectual fulfillment and he knows where to find it. Fortunately, he attends a public elementary school that is extraordinary in many ways, one that feeds the intellectual, social and emotional needs of its young charges far beyond what other schools offer. Far beyond what the curriculum asks. Far beyond what most schools would dare or be allowed to do.

Christopher doesn't have ADHD because he got what he needed, both at home and at school. Some day he may find a cure for cancer or develop the mysterious Theory of Everything that Einstein sought all his adult life. Chris is a genius because nobody prevented him from being one. He doesn't even know it yet because no one has told him. What he knows is that life is filled with potential.

Nobody in his life thought that he should conform, to be average, to be like other kids, and insisted on it. The people closest to him thought he should be who he could be. They may have wanted him to be quieter, but rather than punish him for being boisterous or aggressive, they fed his need for new knowledge and skills.

He learned at a blistering pace and he will continue to do so because he knows he can. He can learn as much and as fast as he wants, on any subject of his choosing.

This is not the time for blame, to point the finger at those who have prevented so many other kids from becoming geniuses, from becoming the best they could be. This is the time to change our ways so we no longer dumb-down most kids so they can become obedient employees and consumers as adults.

We have the opportunity to make the 21st century better than any before it. It won't hurt anyone and it should benefit everyone. We just need to do some things differently. It won't be hard. One thing we can do is to provide better stimulation for the intellectual development of young children. That's actually easy because most adults know these things anyway, they just don't know they should be teaching them to their children. We also need to teach new parents (or pre-parents) what they should know about child development and needs.

Let's not wait until Chris is old enough and wise enough to make a difference in the world himself. Let's get started now. ADHD is the label we give to kids with more extreme behaviours of unsatisfaction. The less extreme ones we simply call bratty.

As if young children want to be that way. They don't. They really don't.

Writing this article has already made a difference for me. It has always mystified me why my wife had trouble in high school, sometimes has great difficulty following written directions, often can't follow spoken directions requiring more than one separate action, forgets many things I wish she could remember but has a memory like a steel trap for other things and can learn well with certain teaching methods but fails badly with others. In grade school she was smart. In high school she was made to feel dumb, as if she had hit her intellectual "wall."

I now understand that my wife has an undiagnosed form of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder that is sufficiently mild that it stayed beneath the radar of educators and employers throughout her school and working life. Now that she has become aware of it, she can learn how to cope with and make compensations for her ADHD. For me, my wife's unusual behaviour in some situations now makes sense. I can adjust to what I can understand.

Those who lose a foot in a childhood accident learn to conduct their lives differently from most of us because they know they are missing a foot. Those who have ADHD could cope better if they had the necessary direction and skills. Parents who understand ADHD can provide opportunities for intellectual development of their children so they will never become "bad kids."

We can each adjust to the strange behaviour of those we encounter if we understand why they act the way they do. Otherwise they may be punished for acting different or strange. I have not conducted a study, nor have I been able to find research to support or deny this proposal, but I suspect prisoners and adults under medical care for mental or emotional problems would be found to be overrepresentated with ADHD in comparison with the general population.

This is not a scientific hypothesis, but merely an observation. Might our modern insistence upon instant gratification, instant rewards, the frenetic struggle through the "rat race," our desire to find drugs to quick-fix our health after a self-destructive lifestyle harmed it, our seeking of thrills through risky behaviours and addictive indulgences and our habit of finding someone to blame for everything that we don't like be symptoms of culture-wide ADHD on an unimaginably massive scale?

We now have a place to begin, to prevent the proliferation of ADHD in the general population by addressing the intellectual needs of young children and to help those with ADHD and those they come in contact with regularly to understand and to cope with what seems to be unusual, erratic, irresponsible or careless behaviour.

We know where to begin. Let's begin now. Talk it up.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to understand how children develop and when to satisfy their needs, to encourage those streams of development.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Where Do Bullying and Jealousy Come From?

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

What's Paris Hilton Up To?

Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.
- Thomas Szasz, author, professor of psychiatry (1920- )

I can imagine Dr. Szasz reading this quote again with his tongue stuck so far into his cheek that his cheek goes red, chuckling at his wit until he nearly falls off his chair. I would if I were in his shoes.

Let's examine it more carefully. At first blush it seems to say that modern industrial societies (those whose corporations control social norms, usually with the blessing of their respective governments) want to keep people in a childlike state of mind for as long as possible. Then when they realize that they are no longer kids (around age 40-45 in many cases), they have a brief period of adult behaviour and thinking before their bodies ease them into old age.

In the cottage area where I live, people flock from the Toronto region on weekends where they promptly stock up on the marijuana supply they will need, then fuel up their all-terrain vehicles, personal watercraft and chain saws so they can act like the wild teenagers most never were. These people are mostly men, all with at least some white in their hair, what's left of it.

Their great fear (perhaps loathing would be a better word) is growing old. In their attempts to recapture their youth, most completely miss playing out the mature, responsible adult stage, the one that most of us would consider the age of people who would control the governments of their country and operate businesses and industries that keep people employed and the economy moving.

To ensure that they are not considered "age inappropriate" to their children and teenage kids, they supply the young generation with the same toys (downsized for the younger ones) that they use themselves. Thus the kids don't care if their dads act like teenagers because they have the same adult toys as their parents.

Can these (formerly called) middle age men provide good role models for their children? By not taking responsibility for the welfare of their own lives (take that where you will), they provide no good example for their children to follow. An example, yes, not a good one. If anything, what they eat and drink and otherwise consume (drugs, for example) silently but effectively teaches the kids that the need for taking responsibility for the safe and fulfilling conduct of their lives is not necessary.

Obesity is rampant in this generation, as it is in the younger ones, because they eat mostly prepared foods (bolstered by chemical preservatives, loaded with fat, salt and sugars). They spend almost all of their time with their knees bent into a sitting position. Standing is limited, walking is rare, genuine exercise is not in evidence. Generally speaking, if it burns gasoline or produces alcohol, it's good.

Meanwhile, these aging children take advantage of the tolerance our bodies have for abuse and misuse. They do this through their "adult" years, until the body can't take any more and breaks down. Heart attack, cancer, osteoporosis, the usual effects that visit a body that can't take the wildness of teenage life for decades in a row.

Now they turn to prescription drugs to get them past pain, high blood pressure and cholesterol, brittle joints and atrophied muscles. With more and more people living to the century mark these days and most living into their 80s and 90s, that makes for a very long period of old age.

Are they ready for it? Sure, they have their pensions, insurance plans and investments in place so that they can pay for whatever therapies they need, for decade upon decade. One insurance company touts a "Freedom 55" plan, likely for those who won't be healthy enough to work until a more reasonable age for retirement.

What happens to that period of mature adulthood in between childhood and old age, the one that Dr. Szasz said societies are trying to shrink? Look at how often CEOs of large corporations are in civila court, in prison or in debt and look at the people we have running our countries to see that we seem to have no mature adults (or not enough) to run either our corporations or our governments. Look at how many people follow the misadventures of Hollywood tabloid types, apparently loving the fact that they don't get into as much trouble as Paris Hilton any other of the tabloid stars.

The "serious" adults compare themselves to wealthy people who manage to make themselves public figures without any qualifications other than the fact that they are rich and they can commit outrageous deeds. ("You're fired!")

I have no idea how wild and careless Dr. Szasz may have been in his younger years. I do know that now he is a wise observer of life.

Might he want to be president of his country, the USA? No. He's not that dumb. Beside, he has devoted his life to healing, not to killing.

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 will be well balanced adults who can take the responsibilities we need them to take to guide their country and the younger generations.
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

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

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 Power Of Big Industry

If you want to know how powerful the pharmaceutical industry is, such that it gets the nickname Big Pharma, ask yourself why good health practices are not taught in schools and supported by curriculum and resources. Our education systems teach kids how to be good employees, but not how to be good people, with good character and morals, or even how to live healthy and satisfying lives. Schools that do teach such topics are rare.

Historically, industries use up young people in the prime of life, then spit them out when they get past their most useful stage. By that time they are ready to be permanent customers of...Big Pharma. All big industry has a vested interest in maintaining the system's status quo.

Everyone believes that good physical, emotional and intellectual health should be goals of their society, but few adults really know the practical aspects about how to achieve them. Fewer still of those who know actually put their knowledge into practice. It's too easy to be like everyone else. Industry makes it too easy to follow the crowd.

The biggest problem in the sphere of health is that people don't know what good health practices are and they have trouble finding out. When they turn to government health services, they find either a confusion of data resulting from studies sponsored by pharmaceutical companies contradicting independent studies or clear pronouncements of health needs that vastly understate the real health needs of people.

An example would be a lack of information about our need for trace minerals, the lack of which could result in death or disability for some. When's the last time you heard about someone dying of a deficiency of selenium, for example? Yet a good friend of mine received a diagnosis that he had been about two weeks away from death from selenium deficiency when the specialist saw him. His family doctor knew nothing about the problem.

Reading magazines only confuses the issue because they tend to follow the latest trends and fads without doing real research into how to achieve good health. Consequently, most of us turn to Big Pharma as our saviour when our body begins to break down.

Big Sugar is the name given to the sugar industry because it controls so much of the diet that too many people in western countries follow. You can find products containing far too much refined sugar in vending machines in schools, even in some of the prepared foods that cafeterias serve.

At your supermarket, foods loaded with refined sugar can be found in abundance in almost every aisle (except the produce section where the sugar is natural). Refined sugar junk food products are often among the cheapest in the store. Some of them always appear around the checkout counters where marketers know that impulse buyers will grab them as they open their purses. You can find some in almost every aisle.

Across the country, sugar-laden junk foods are the cheapest foods in every store. Oddly, it would seem, though some products vary hugely in price from one part of a large country to another, sugar-laden foods hold the same price wherever you go. Differences in costs for transportation explain great differences in prices for many products such as fruits and vegetables, but the same factors seem to not apply to sugary junk foods. Apparently it costs more to ship healthy food products great distances across a country, but junk foods cost no more to travel the same distances.

The obesity problem that plagues every western nation has refined sugar as one of the major contributing factors. Diabetes follows obesity, though diabetes also has its own pipeline.

You can't turn around without bumping into something made from the raw material of Big Oil. Everything plastic, for a start. Everything in your car that isn't metal (with the exception of coolant and washer fluid) is made partly with oil.

You can't move anywhere outside of your home without using some products made from oil. Even walking or riding a bicycle you likely have oil as part of your footwear and other clothing.
Each year we watch as the cost of gasoline rises, along with the profits of oil companies.

Big Oil profits most in wartime. Military vehicles require huge amounts of fuel (no hybrid fuel or fuel-efficient trucks there). Many countries with oil reserves in the ground are world trouble spots because power mongers want to control its sale. Those who control the oil resources of a country control that country to a great extent. That includes the US where the Oilmen Bush have held the presidency for 12 of the past 20 years.

Nothing you or I can do will directly change the dominance and power that these giant industries have over our lives. Even former US President Bill Clinton couldn't do that; as soon as he left office the oilmen bought their way back in.

However, we can change our habits and we can talk with others about how small changes among many people can make a huge difference. Fruit provides the same sugar kick as junk food, while also giving us vitamins and minerals without the results of the sugar refining process to mess up our bodies. We can learn about and support alternative energy sources.

And we can learn how to live healthy lives that won't find us dependant on drugs to get us through the final decades of our life. Big Industry doesn't want us to do that.

So, how do you feel about the whole thing?

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book for adults to learn how to teach their children how to lead healthy lives that don't depend on Big Industry to tell them what to do.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Has Lawbreaking Become A Social Norm?

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
- Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)

Most of us who are Baby Boomers or older grew up in a time when laws were to be obeyed. We knew what the laws were and it was our social (and family) responsibility to uphold them.

We didn't know much about those who freely and frequently broke laws because we didn't come in contact with them much. Recent studies in the US have shown that 90 percent of people today break laws frequently and without twinges of conscience. Most violations are minor, but they make laws in general seem like a social evil.

What changed? Why do we have so little respect for laws today compared to a couple of generations ago?

There are no simple answers to these questions, but I will try to simplify the complex answers and give you the opportunmity to think them through yourself.

Prior to the 1960s children were drilled formally and taught incidentally the range and scope of laws they were expected to obey, by parents, teachers and leaders of their respective church groups. In the interim, regular attendance at religious services dropped off dramatically, school curricula have been loaded to overflowing with "basic learning" information and skills and two parents working in most families have left little time for parental role modelling and direct teaching of the laws of their community and their nation.

As more children grew to be young adults who lacked knowledge about laws that affected them, more also became adults who were not clear about the moral obligations each person has to the social structure of their family and their community. In other words, they broke laws because they weren't certain the laws were all that important anyway or because they didn't know what the laws were.

Governments, reacting with shock to the increase in law breaking, passed more laws and bylaws. These became filled with details of specific examples of lawbreaking so that judges, magistrates and justices of the peace were left with fewer doubts as to what behaviours were illegal and what penalties should apply to each.

The plethora of laws to which each citizen must subscribe today is so complex that almost nobody knows what they all are. In their rush to create more laws and put more power into the hands of more police officers to catch more lawbreakers, the law makers neglected to provide clear and pervasive methods by which each child or adolescent would be able to learn the many laws he should abide by.

A teenager today may be able to do physics his parents don't understand, speak languages his parents have seldom heard and know a huge amount of information his parents were never exposed to, but he may not know the laws of his community and his country because most of them never made it onto the curriculum of his school.

Moreover, he may read the pages of any newspaper to find many examples of where people have broken laws. He will know many schoolmates and acquaintances in his community who break laws freely without being caught. Even television programs deal mostly with the most violent laws, seldom with those that affect most people on a daily basis.

A young person may even see a police officer speeding down a city street or highway on their way to a coffee break or to signout for their shift. He knows that the same police officer may catch and charge him the following day for speeding on the same street.

There are many laws that are never enforced by the police because they will not be supported in court or because the courts have many more important cases to attend to than minor cases that will "waste" precious time.

Like anything else in life, if we want people to obey laws, we need to teach those laws to children before they get old enough to find out that breaking them might just work. They need to be taught the gritty details about what is wrong, about the consequences that result when people break laws. They need to know the harm that lawbreaking does and that the harm is wrong.

Not teaching about drug laws because we fear that kids will find out about drugs and become addicts, for example, has no evidence to support it. Kids who know the truth about drugs before they are exposed to drugs on the street (often by the age of six years) tend to avoid the drugs.

By the same token, kids who know the details about sex and the responsibilities and consequences of pregnancies have a much lower incidence of teenage pregnancies and often do not have close relationships with members of the opposite sex until later than their more ignorant peers. Where do laws and sex come together? Ask a 16 year old father or mother who has life-altering responsibilities for a child they didn't want but will have to look after and be fully responsible for during the next 20+ years.

Making laws is one thing. Teaching them to everyone who must obey them is quite another.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the complexities of life clear and concise.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

We Need To Teach

"Everybody has talent, it's just a matter of moving around until you've discovered what it is."
- George Lucas, movie producer and animation innovator

Doesn't that make sense? Lucas, an inventor and producer of dreams in reality, learned that as an adult. In general, that is not a lesson that children are taught.

Innovation--just being different--is a risky business. Society mediates against those who are different. They don't have ladders to climb. They must create their own mountains, then scale the precipices themselves. When they reach the top, they need to market themselves so that others will know what they have accomplished.

Our society is designed to produce followers. Which suits business fine because they treasure employees who will follow the role model they have described. In a society whose work habits, clothing styles, cosmetic usage, hair styles and even morals and ethics are dictated by business, the economy revolves around followers.

Young people who move around to discover their strengths receive little support or encouragement in a broad sense. Business does not like movers, unless they are winners from another company that choose to move to their own business. Moving out is not encouraged, nor is moving up (again in a general sense).

Our education systems prescribe a set curriculum and schools test to ensure that students have attained comptence in the skills and memory of the knowledge to be tested. The objective, we are told, is to ensure that each child receives the same minimum level of skills and knowledge within the public school system.

This objective is worthy to an extent. Yet we still have many young people leaving school without knowing how to read or write at a functionally acceptable level. And we have persistant discipline problems and troublemakers in school who become owners of business empires or great artists by middle age.

In a time when moving around to find your strengths is difficult in most communities and the base of general knowledge grows much faster than it can possibly be taught in schools, we need different ways of doing things.

First we need to teach life skills so that students know how to cope with rapidly changing work and even personal environments. We need to teach children where and how to find the knowledge they require, rather than simply acquiring a little of it for particular classroom projects.

We need to teach social skills to every child so that the "equality of opportunity" to which we pay homage can become a reality where each adult knows how the systems of life work. Opportunities in life mean more than laws and competence with curriculum.

We need to teach emotional (psychological) skills so that each person understands the needs that we all have and knows how to manage their own. They will also know how to recognize problems in others and take steps to intervene to help where advisable.

We need to learn how to help each other and that asking for help is perfectly acceptable. We need to learn that it's in our community's best interests for everyone to be socially and emotionally stable so that we have no hesitation about helping others because we know that the whole community will benefit. And that helping others in need is socially correct.

We need to put into place values where everyone understands that they do not have to be self-sustaining islands of independence, but instead should be part of the community in which they live. A community improves where everyone contributes to it and this will not happen so long as everyone believes that they must look out for their own best interests because no one else will.
We need to learn trust and honesty before we buy our way into chaos and perpetual war. Trust and honesty will be learned if and when they are taught as values and norms of society.

If most people cannot move around freely to discover their strengths, as George Lucas did, then we must provide similar opportunities within school and home environments. This can happen, but only if we teach the necessary skills and knowledge to everyone.

Right now we have the skills and knowledge, but it's wrapped up in psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists who make their living by trying to patch up people who are emotionally and socially broken. The skills and knowledge are in the wrong hands. They need to be in the hands of teachers who can convey them to every child.

Let's stop forever trying to fix broken people. Let's give them what they need to prevent them from breaking in the first place.

The place to begin is within the education systems. Then it will move into homes.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to shine a light forward in an increasingly dark tunnel that is our future.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

We Are Letting Our Children Become Addicts

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and novelist (1811-1896)

Why do we do that? Why do we wait until after a person has died to feel the urge to tell them how fond we were of them? Why do we wait to do many things until it's too late?

It dates to the Victorian era, the period of the 60 year reign of Queen Victoria, of the UK. She and any of the nobility that influenced her are directly responsible for some of the backwards and destructive kinds of behaviours we have today in western society.

For example, we believe that children should not learn about sex until they are adult or about to be married. Then we have 15 year olds getting pregnant and blame the parents for adhering to the norms of society, which are to keep their kids ignorant of the facts.

We seem to believe that no one should be told about drugs or other addictive practices for fear that knowledge will corrupt and those who know will become addicts. Then we have preteens using drugs and even selling them to pay for their habit.

Victoria and her clan taught us that childhood is a time of innocence, that there is lots of time in adulthood to learn about the darker sides of life. In isolation, that seems reasonable. But childhood is intended to be the period where children learn everything they need to know about the world of adults. It's why human childhood is so much longer than the childhoods of most other animals.

We fail our children when we don't teach them the gritty side of life. Whether we teach them or not, they will learn about it.

The trouble with that is that when they learn this stuff from their peers or other sources than their parents, they usually get the message wrong. If you doubt this, think about how much you knew about sex (including the usual period of female fertility) and the consequences of pregnancy when you first began to "make out." Most people knew almost nothing, though they were engaging in an activity that we would all agree eventually leads to copulation.

Childhood is not a time of innocence, but of ignorance. The longer we keep children ignorant, the greater the risks we take with their lives and their ability to cope with the realities of the adult world.

Timing of the teaching of life skills and knowledge is important, of course. But how do you know what the right timing is? It is critical (in the extreme) that children know what they need to know before that knowledge is needed. Before, not after kids have problems, as it is today.

Since primary school kids are being introduced to drugs on their way to school or in the school environs, the time to tell children about drugs is when they first go to school. The time to teach them about alcohol is not long after that. Grade school kids in many areas are exposed to offers of alcohol away from their homes.
A responsible parent has learned when kids are first introduced to the activities we would rather them not participate in and teaches what his children need to know before that age. But how many young adults know enough themselves to manage that responsibility?

In fact, what most young parents hear from many sources causes them to believe that their kids are better off kept "innocent" until they are old enough to be addicts or to have destroyed their lives in other ways, such as being parents at age 15.

"Innocence" equals ignorance. Learn it. Make use of it.

We need fewer people in prison and on Prozac, not more.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to bring the truth to those who don't recognize it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com