I had no intention of spending another day on education at this point; however, this morning, I helped proctor an ACT test. While strict records of times and conditions are required, it’s really not taxing — not for me.
I haven’t proctored for awhile. I do help students prepare for these tests, and I always do it by de-emphasizing the significance of them. You can say what you want, but when people decide they want something and focus and drive, they will get it. Tests don’t matter. A mediocre GPA doesn’t matter. I have heard educators many times say at least it makes reaching goals easier if you really strive to do well in school and score high on tests to get into a college of choice. Yeah, no, not if young adults have no idea of who they are or what they want to do. You know what else really helps? Having a family fortune backing you up, but the same principles apply: if one does not know who they are or what they want, they are miserable rich people who mess things up instead of miserable poor people. Point: This lame excuse for extrinsic motivation of doing the best for some unknown, undetermined future sucks. Blowing the importance of the test out of all proportions does do one thing well: it creates massive stress for most students. By the way, often educators will jump on relatively meaningless shit like this because they really need something to do, something to focus on, something to lend validity to their work. That’s sad. An ACT or SAT college admissions test, if necessary (not), should just be taken as run of the mill at a certain point with no extra preparation and no pressure. Just see how things are, and while I don’t need this, it would be better. But this is impossible now. As with many issues, when we experience personal encounters with someone living in a situation, opinions can be reinforced or changed. This morning, I saw a student break down in tears — not during the test but at the end when the impact of it hit. Paying a hefty fee for professional tutoring (not from me!) didn’t make a difference when time was forgotten and blank spaces were left on the ACT, which is one of the first things students are told not to do because, unlike the SAT, there is no penalty for wrong answers — always a 25% chance of getting it right. I should mention this student already scored significantly above state and national scores. I should also mention the test is destructive — oh, not the score but the fact the test is norm-referenced. The other sort of test is criterion-referenced, like end-of-course exams, common core tests, and others. And this brings me to my main point tonight, a simple point I have stated but I want to make this as stark and bold as I can, especially after witnessing a bright, sweet-natured student reduced to tears over something as meaningless as an academic test. The current mainstream education system is Ego-based. This is not a positive thing for education, individuals living it, or the society into which students will emerge. They have been taught to respond to Ego stimuli and chase Ego goals. They will produce an Ego-driven government either through being politicians themselves or through participation in the voting process. Ego-driven individuals, cultures, and societies will produce Ego consequences, the worst being destruction resulting from unfulfilled drives to know who we are, recognizing Heart, self-identity, and to live as creative beings, designing and implementing the creation of our own Purpose. Evidence of Ego permeates education today. The emphasis on testing — I don’t care if they are formative like everyday tests in the classroom or if they are summative criterion-based tests or if they are normed tests like the college admissions and IQ tests. Tests do exactly what Ego does: rank and segregate and isolate and shove us into some role in some bell-shaped curve, in an egoic society in which everyone must have some role in comparison to all else and within the standard deviations. Or, if criterion-referenced, be measuring up to others’ standards — oftentimes invalid, stupid ones. (I’ve seen them and debated them and refuted them as I have been on a number of curriculum committees and served on establishing criteria on a state select committee.) Most mission statements of schools say something about life-long learners; they develop life-long followers, working to please someone else, to gain acceptance and give a false sense of significance defined by someone else. Emptiness. Frustration. Kids crying over tests because they failed someone else. And you know the insidious part? They believe they are the someone else. I could examine almost any instance of standard practices in most schools, public, charter public, or private, and give ample evidence of an Ego-based value system. Do we really want that for our young people and our society? You do understand, don’t you, that if Ego is the basis, communism, democracy, poverty, wealth, relationships, or anything in life is determined by who ends up with the most power, who is strongest, and we just take what we want from those who are weaker? That’s what is happening now. I am proposing Heart-based education, where discovering Self and creating purpose makes up the philosophical foundation. The end. But that end is the beginning of a significant, far more significant, education. Carl Rogers in his powerful, insightful work, Freedom to Learn, harmonizes with this approach to education, which I classify as a redefinition. He calls his approach “person-centered.” It’s what I call Heart. He observes many of the things I write about describing current philosophy. He also elaborates how his “person-centered,” my Heart-based education, appears, because he saw it implemented in a number of schools. I saw the same evidence when I practiced it with my students. I also know the work of Big Picture Schools, operating as I write this, yields validity. It boils down, in many ways, to this statement by Rogers: “The tentative conclusion is that even though modern humans no longer trust religion or science or philosophy or any system of beliefs to give them their values, they can find an organismic valuing base deep within themselves…” (291). I call that “organismic valuing base” Heart. The corollaries, extrapolations, and reasoning based on this create Heart-based education. This is what we need now. Unless people, informed people who can make their voices heard, campaign for such schools, the democratic experience Americans hoped for or blindly believed they have is doomed. Too dramatic? I hope you don’t have to see that. Philosophy and practice must be changed from an Ego-based education system, including all its continual and ineffective reforms, to a Heart-based education, no system involved. Blessings! (Rogers, Carl R., and H. Jerome. Freiberg. Freedom to learn. Third ed. New York: Merrill, 1995. Print.)
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Do we really remember what it is like to be 5 or 9 or 12 or 14 or 16 years old? Really remember? I can’t say I do. I have impressions, specific clear memories, and the emotions. And perhaps the emotions are the most important component of memories — how we felt.
Yes, we usually remember how others made us feel, if we choose to give them that sort of power over us. The point is emotions are powerful. In fact, we don’t learn very well at all, if at all, when we don’t have positive emotions going into a learning experience. This is why most people learn a lot when they have to pick up spots of knowledge here and there on different topics as they work on a job or project they have chosen and want to complete. We learn well, unimpeded, and overcome obstacles when we are enthusiastic. Enthusiasm of students isn’t often a valued commodity in a classroom. More accurately, it isn’t a primary goal. A significant percentage of complaints students have about school is that they are not interested in what they are being forced to learn. They ask questions about the rationale, and oftentimes the response they get about why it’s necessary — poetic devices, functions in math, the Krebs cycle, or any of thousands of other possibilities — is they need to know it for next year, it’s on the end-of-year test or the ACT or the state Common Core test. Never good answers, in fact, they’re horrible, non-relevant answers. In further fact, if one is an educator and that is the only reason for doing something — curriculum or not — then it shouldn’t take up any time and certainly not be on some test. By the way, every standardized test is held not only over students’ heads but also teachers’. I heard on several occasions from administration that we might as well accept it, that the state had invested millions of dollars in it, and it wasn’t going away. Every single one did. My emotional response to that? I don’t trust you any more. And if kids don’t find they ever face doing a matrix again, they won’t trust future teachers when they tell them the same bullshit about you need to know it for the future. How do they feel? Do we hear them? Do we hear one another? Do we really want to make school hard to prepare them for a hard life? Shouldn’t we prepare them for a fulfilling, significant life — which means in part they are being heard — instead of one where they expect rigor? Oh, I used that word on purpose. Do you know how stupid that sounds to me? Rigor, many educators think that is something to boast about. A school has academic rigor. It means hardship. They purposefully want to make it hard. It’s the mindset of the current screwed up system. I enjoyed my years as a teacher. I loved being in the classroom with my students; however, since my philosophy is diametrically opposed to the current mainstream philosophy, I had almost no patience with stupid programs promoted and jumped on as “reform movements,” which meant next to nothing in the classroom. But we had to have endless trainings and meetings about them. And it was all dutifully carried back to students. Then they would ask why they had to know this or do that. That top down approach is the wrong way to educate a young person. They want to be heard. They want to know that what they think about is serious and deep, no matter what level they are. When they are heard and educators show empathy, learning changes. It’s why I could still get in the curriculum but give my students a different experience, limited though it was. It shouldn’t be limited. A student-generated and -centered curriculum should be the norm in a democratic classroom. If not, we will only see things like the current situation in American and even British politics, in which governance continues to worsen. We should view kids as coming to us filled with their knowledge and self-awareness, and our job is to find out how to help them add in existing knowledge to create what they desire, something meaningful, significant. When they are doing that, the learning accelerates, but more importantly, much more importantly, they feel enriched, significant, fulfilled and not beaten to a pulp by a rigorous curriculum. Allow me to say this, though. Most teachers get into the profession because they care about young people. They oftentimes are following soul conviction in doing it. When teacher education and preparation is not along the lines of an emergent curriculum in a democratic classroom, they don’t know to teach any differently. And that needs to change. Of course, I’ve made the point that to change, education must be redefined as emanating from the student and not being forced on and into them. I have pleasant memories of Fridays in school. I faked sickness a lot because I hated school, not being heard, not engaging me. But Fridays, for a few years when I got to be one of two audio visual helpers for the weekly Friday delivery, I loved that. I would see what we were going to be watching. And those films or filmstrips had no ulterior motive but presenting things for us to absorb and wonder about, especially the science ones. I didn’t care about tests or homework; I just loved learning, and those audiovisual aids gave me pause to respond in wonder, awe, understanding. I could go on, but I wanted to speak a little more personally about education following last night’s mini-manifesto, which upon re-reading, I found somewhat acerbic. But in a way, I beat the system in my little corner of the world or school, as it may be. My students and I had real concern, care, compassion, and respect for one another. I valued them, and because of that, they valued me, even when we were forced to do some things like tests. The great Carl Rogers, the twentieth century psychologist of Freedom to Learn fame, said, “When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable string into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.” How do we feel when we know we are heard, when we are counted significant, when our input, our beings, are included in the big picture? Pretty awesome. Students deserve this maybe more than anyone. We should hear our kids and the words and actions from ourselves when it comes to education. They are more important and have greater knowledge than any hand-me-down curriculum guide. And when we realize that and redefine education, we won’t believe the innovation, progress, and beauty that will result from that. Oh, don’t forget the improvement of the face of future government. Blessings, you wonderful, wise learners! Education should be true to the word from which it has been formed. The word indicates to lead forth. Education concerns leading forth from the child that with which each one arrives here on planet Earth. Without knowing what a child’s natural interests and passions are, it cannot possibly be educated in a manner that has the best interest in mind.
And if education does not have the best interest of the individual in mind, then it is an informal conspiracy meant to manipulate and brainwash kids for others’ purposes. When we force students from day one to do things for which they can see no rationale except adults are bigger and stronger than them, we are not educating. When everything is prescribed — the day is planned minute by minute, the textbooks are printed, the tests are copied, the averages are known, and the grade scales are set — then, the philosophy is, in essence, “Do it this way because that is what is expected of you.” All the add-ons, the cutesy projects, class votes, inviting students to be on a committee — all of that stuff is relatively meaningless. The belief is that a set, prescribed curriculum by some very few people will communicate — what? Society expectations? Business goals? College standards? It really doesn’t matter because students have no part in any of that, and if they don’t, none of it is valid. Humans, any human, young or old, knows how to learn, how to collect knowledge, make personal connections, and create new knowledge resulting from that. This is education, and it is natural. Formal education helps discoverers delve into specifics and organize the efforts. In my redefinition of and revolution in education, students should design their own curriculum. Many educators aren’t equipped to know how to assist in that because it puts educators in the uncomfortable position of not having everything prescribed, preset. It’s relatively easy to appear to be the all-knowing oracle when you already have everything written down — or the teacher textbook. It’s not so easy to be a real coach or teacher when you are thinking, working together in an emergent curriculum. Implications? Teacher training, education needs to change. Teachers need to experience education the way they should employ it with students. (I know it can be done because my master’s program did it.) How? On the most basic level, it’s a matter of spiritual awakening. No, that can’t be boxed off. We are complete beings, holistic, and something as fundamental as education cannot leave out any factor. We don’t have an education section of the brain, a religious section, or any other compartmentalized ones; just like education, it’s all connected. No one will know where passions that develop into even academic pursuits lie until they know themselves. No, this cannot be taught; it can, however, be encouraged indirectly, as it should be, by simply not creating a subculture of conformity, which is what “school” becomes. Individuality, valuing of diversity, thinking for oneself, identifying and engaging in interests — all these and more open us to Heart operating within us. Education starts there, and that has to do directly with school environment and culture and nothing to do with desks in straight lines, the same books to each student, the same assignments at the same time, the same tests — or any tests for that matter. As students progress, so do the depths of their interests, which necessitates increasing collection of knowledge. It works. While I struggled to maintain this philosophy in a standard classroom, many other schools exist employing this sort of philosophy. One of the most advanced and functional organizations is the Big Picture Schools. The details of this model of education which is antithetical to mainstream practices today, not to mention one that should shame the current federal Department of Education, from here on out would become very individual. I have worked it in the classroom over many years. I have led teacher study groups based on democratic principles. I know it impacts lives, and the experience I gave students helped some to know they have a Heart to which they can respond. Educating young people based on the reality of our composition as human beings holds the only hope I know of if we in democratic nations are to avoid falling prey to lying leaders who are gradually transforming freedom into forced servitude, without the slaves even knowing they are such. That’s scary, but it’s happening as of today. I know my truth, so the bastards in government can lie through their pearly whites while they smile — “O villain, villain, smiling, damnéd villain. That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain…” (Hamlet) — and I will go on creating according to my truth, exposing the likes of them, encouraging young people and educators in democratic models of edcuation. I’m not suggesting a gradual trial here. I’m saying an immediate revolution may be the only thing that can save liberty in the sense we desire, at least I desire: that everyone in their own way may engage in “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” without prejudice and with joy and protections of government for our basic rights. The current drift is not this way at all, not when rights are being sacrificed for business, profits, money, power, wealth. No matter what socioeconomic level people find themselves in, their rights are no different. It includes rights to live in natural environments, which means environmental protections are in place, too. It means rights of minorities and subcultures are protected, as long as they do not involve destruction of others’ basic rights. Yes, a revolution that employs the redefinition of education beginning with the most basic level of curriculum designed by each student for themselves, which by nature encourages and engenders discovery of Self and all the wonders of the Universe. Our hardwiring as social creatures will take care of the organization and interactions, and the facilitation of all of this will be in the hands of well-trained educators. I can tell you from experience, the professionalism called for in this redefinition of education requires hard work, damn hard work. But it is so worth it. Blessings as you, no matter what stage of life you are in, consider these things. You say you care about democracy and freedom? The way things are now lead straight to acceptance of an oligarchy without us even being aware, and it’s been conditioned through the school system. It’s time to revolt, time to awaken to Self. The human species absolutely amazes me. We are built, hardwired, as a social race. To varying degrees, we are all social. It’s good to recognize our nature.
Henry David Thoreau said as much in his seminal work, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays: “If a plant cannot live according to it nature, it dies, and so a man.” Not only are we social but also in order to live in a healthy society, we each must realize our self-identity and create a Purpose. If we don’t know who we are, we can’t create a Purpose consistent with Heart. We desire Purpose, because that is the way we relate to one another, i.e., form a society. Our nature, then, consists of knowing self, creating self-purpose, and living that in the midst of others, society. Great! So what? It goes a step further, really many steps further. If everyone experienced what I describe above, then I probably would not have created the purpose I have. Things would be awesome. However, we come hardwired with Ego, also, in addition to Heart. Ego helps us gain a sense of our being in society, but it can hinder our coming to self-awareness by making us conform to many things in order to fit into society, to relate, but in a way that denies our true nature. Remember Thoreau? Some people delve deeply into Ego and wield it as a weapon in an attempt — oh, mostly subconscious — to be in control, fit in, fill the emptiness of not knowing their own Heart. When some of these folks, who can be accomplished, persuasive, brilliant, even personable, start manipulating and controlling through power plays in a multitude of ways, the masses over time grow wary. Then, revolutions occur. When people have felt oppressed and repressed, disregarded and disrespected, voiceless and unnoticed, they are not living their nature. We need freedom to be and live core Self and our Purpose. Yet, when we neglect self-awareness and creating a purpose, we do the stupidest of things: put ourselves in the hands of a government to fill purposes we neglect. This means society, a natural society where we each are free to follow “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” doesn’t work the way it should. It depends on each of us. The current political and governmental situation exemplifies this. It’s revolting, repulsive, and replete with dishonesty. Ego won this round at a national level, and it affects all of us. People have no trust in one another, in who has facts or not, in the very offices at the highest level. Of course, I have always been a nonconformist and questioned everything, but in the past, I could evaluate wise, learned evidence. That only exists in few places now; the ranting and raving on both sides of the issue do nothing to help anyone forward. This current executive administration has effectively destroyed the basis envisioned by our founders for a nation in which people could seek, know, and live their personal truth. Enough. And I hope it has been enough that people might ask what can be done. Nothing fast — well, it could start with a healthy impeachment and abdication of the unqualified, ass-covering liars the executive has surrounded himself with. The deeper action, more lasting and effectual one, revolves around education. (And I already know I do not have enough time or space tonight to complete my thoughts.) Education in its current form with all the reform measures, programs, interventions — all of this meaningless shit needs to be overthrown. Revolution and redefinition are required. You think I’m a nut case, don’t you? Come on, admit it?! I would not be like a lying S.O.B. of a political candidate saying such things if I did not have many years experience as a professional educator. And if, beyond that, I had not practiced what I preach in the limited, dictatorial, industrialized system that is the current educational establishment. And I wish to shed some light on this before ending tonight to set up the positive possibilities I may address tomorrow — a dramatic, dark background to provide contrast for the brilliant light of hope for humanity. Today’s educational establishment reeks of what so many speak of but do little to change: it’s an industrial model complex. Many reform movements propose to change this. In fact, I just heard a snippet of another tired webinar today by a supposedly leading reformer. Do I agree with project-based learning, inquiry-based learning, and dozens of others? Yes, in their concept but not in their implementation. They are like throwing someone a rock when they need a life preserver. Why? Because the second that these methods, really systems packaged for sale, are introduced, when educators talk about getting the teachers and students on board, they have automatically told me that the stakeholders had no part in development. They must be sold a bill of goods. It’s exactly like a factory. Here are the parts. Construct the product based on this plan. Do not deviate. Your product (students) will undergo quality control examination (testing, assessment, or whatever other euphemistic term they wish to use). Oh, the high school kids didn’t pass quality control. It’s because those guys in the assembly line before us didn’t add the parts in the right way. They didn’t teach math, writing, reading, or whatever the way they should have. We have a curriculum — product construction manual. It’s all laid out. And reform is only tweaking the directions. We have been taught what good little students and classrooms look like, should sound like, should be doing. The educational establishment down to individual schools in districts sound like idiots to me. They produce mission statements that cannot be reached in the way they approach the children. They should know better. Create life-long learners ? Those would be students who know how to learn and who love to learn. Does cramming them in a room, commanding where they sit, when they eat, go to the bathroom, and what they must learn reap the goal of being a motivated life-long learner? No, it does not. What do grades do for students? Sort them? Some better than others? Indicate progress? If that’s the only way an educator can come up with seeing the value and worth of a child, then they are teaching the wrong things. And they are. The upshot of all this is the current system is a failure. Oh, students aren’t. Yes, there are shining examples of success, but kids do hear their own Heart and learn things because they want to and those sorts of kids make the exceptions — not the system. That is for damned sure. Yes, the upshot: Make kids a product. Build them the way the instruction manual says. Make them dependent on someone else’s approval and evaluation. And reward the hell out of the ones who are exceptional. Show those who don’t conform, who are more defective products, the error of their ways. Remediate. Repair them so they can be sold as functioning products, maybe the economy models. This system has led directly to where America and other nations are right now in the political and governmental quagmire of who to even believe. The products of education, our citizenry, don’t even know what to believe. In fact, those who consider themselves our enemies have already won. We can’t evaluate, reject, formulate, and respond to the lunacy occurring in Washington, D.C., right now, which impacts the rest of this planet in one way or another. Education has been the key to controlling the masses, and masses resigned to mediocrity and dependent on others for money, truth, and direction are slaves under a dictatorial oligarchy. That is where we are, in an unnatural setting in which we are discouraged from living Heart-truth because that threatens those who wield Ego as a weapon of control. Dark enough background. I hope to pierce the darkness tomorrow with the light of hope, that things, education, the nation, the world can be different. But we have to take our lives back, become discoverers of Self, and make the difference. Government will never do that, and if you want it to, you are proof of all that I have been saying. The fact is You are more powerful, brilliant, insightful than the educational system has led you to believe, because all of that is within us, not in a curriculum that can be dumped into our heads or a government that legislates it. Blessings! Many people think in what I would call a normal mode. You know how it goes: 2 + 2 = 4. Plug the numbers into the equation and there’s a solution. That would extend to if-then type statements, logical syllogisms and propositional forms. I admire the folks who think that cleanly.
I don’t; however, I had to teach a majority of students who did. It made me a better thinker by cleaning up my thought structure. Oh, I value the way I think, but that means I must take care in establishing logic links. You see, in my mind, I think holistically: everything is connected and related to the big picture. The students who I had who thought like this appreciated me. I knew what was going on in their minds, because for them 2 + 2 might equal a thunderstorm. And that would seem perfectly logical to them. I bring this up tonight because in terms of things going on in America and the rest of the world right now, I see a lot of interconnectedness. Last night I attempted to get to a main point I never reached because of that. In fact, that happens often. So, let me attempt to give some structure to my thoughts. For all the ugliness of hating others based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or cultural expressions, the root of that is Ego. Many who engage in prejudicial or discriminatory behavior and even seek to legalize it have no idea of the source. When people awaken to Self, they realize that we all are, at our core Heart, of eternal Spirit. No difference except in experience. Now, I realize when Ego-powered behaviors abound — terrorism, crimes, things we normally think of as “evil” — we usually respond in kind. That’s an Ego response: destroy the destroyer. It’s complex, and I don’t want to get into the explanation of the intricacies of it. However, I will say this much: the response and attitude of those who think there is some nobility in some sort of “pure” America, some “great” America, is nothing less than Ego, and it is a rank form of it in a collective sense known as nationalism. It evokes arrogance, superiority, and heartlessness from those who hold to it, and it provokes anger and resentment as Ego responses from other nations and leaders. Part of the sad commentary one of my friends who taught world social studies and called the past presidential election from the beginning observed last week that despite all the problems with the current president, until his actions negatively impact the economy and personal wealth, public sentiment will not force a change. (By the way, he thinks it’s sad, too!). This is Ego in totality: money and wealth and those who hold it supposedly should have the most say and sway in what happens. That Ego-attitude produces the bias, prejudice, discrimination, and just plain heartless hatred I referred to earlier. Let me pull my holistic thought process together. Either a predominance of Ego- or Heart-energy characterizes government, society, and cultures. I believe a democratic government should exist to establish an environment conducive for individuals and a nation and all expressions in between to live in Heart-energy. To tighten the thread of thought of the last two nights, I think that this was the spirit of America’s foundation — which would put to rest this negative immigration furor — and I believe Walt Whitman saw it as such and gave the full expression of that spirit in his poetry. But he saw America beginning to fail; I see it as pretty damn near failure right now. And to my point this evening. I think a primary avenue of establishing such a spirit of living in Heart-energy can be accomplished through education. The current system of public education, which carries over to private schools with very little difference, employs Ego-based philosophy and learning. Education must be redefined to employ Heart-based philosophy. It may be the best hope for Western democracy. Yes, I have employed Heart-based education and know how to do it. Have I personally used it on a large scale? No, not practiced it, but I know it is practicable, a number of large-scale efforts have been in place for years. However, tonight I want to show the Heart, the spiritual essence of the significance of education for our nation and relationship to others. (I will make a political statement here: the Trump appointment and current secretary of education, Betsy DeVos has proven time and again her allegiance to Ego-driven models of education as well as her lack of qualifications to be in such a position. This lady reeks of incompetency and Ego, to me, and accurately reflects the spirit of the one who appointed her). Education should focus on discovery of Self and of the wonders of this world. It should evoke the inner fullness of a youngster to connect with the intricacies of the Universe, especially those that stir the soul and mind. I may speak more to this tomorrow, but for tonight, I would like to end with another quote from Malala Yousafzai from her book I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. She is a young lady who valued the essence of education, whatever philosophy fueled the system she experienced. And that is a great thing about humans: Heart can appropriate anything for our benefit, prompt us to take and use even Ego-generated things for self-awareness, for our awakening. Malala, who was shot because she dared attend school and encouraged other girls in Pakistan to do the same, understands how education is connected to politics and international relationships. The following quote, while in her book, I have taken from an informative opinion article by a South African playwright and author, Ronnie Govender: “Here’s what Malala Yousafzai — in her inspiring book I AM MALALA, which should be compulsory reading in all schools — has to say: ‘When we were invited to the White House we said we would accept the invitation on one condition. ‘If it was just a photo session we would not go, but if Obama would listen to what was in our hearts then we would go. The message came back: you are free to say whatever you wish. And so we did! It was quite a serious meeting. ‘We talked about the importance of education. We discussed the US’s role in supporting dictatorships and drone attacks in countries like Pakistan. I told him that instead of focusing on eradicating terrorism through war, he should focus on eradicating it through education’” (http://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/opinion/malala-example-of-how-islam-can-confront-elephant-in-the-room-1941350). Only Heart-energy sees the value and reality of “eradicating [terrorism] through education.” However, the current system and practice of education will not get us there. We have to know the possibilities and power we possess and live it in our own creation, and that’s why education needs to be redefined and reframed in practice. Blessings! |
Questions to consider:How many times have you asked yourself or simply thought about the following questions?
Who am I, really? What is my truth? How do my actions reveal what I really feel and believe? What would I do with my life if I could do anything? What is my passion? Why am I here? How can I discover answers to any of these questions? If you have considered any of these questions, I hope that my experiences and writing will give you some guidance. Please read my blog and comment and share your thoughts. I would love to hear from you! Archives
December 2019
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