RSS
Home
Education now or no future
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
(AP Photo/Toby Talbot)
Isn’t it odd that our very future existence depends on ideas, creative solutions and problem solving, and yet our worldwide education system exponentially slows down the learning process, particularly for the most gifted, intelligent students? For high risk students, we are in a war, as we don’t reach them at all. High risk students are being targeted worldwide for the most devious crimes. CNN, in a recent report on the drug cartel in Mexico, stated that the going rate to hire a killer for someone in the U.S. is about $100. According to Associated Press reporter David Crary, on May 31, 2009, the “U.S. appetite for illegal drugs is insatiable.” When people don’t know any better and when they are stressed without reasonable means of improvement, they are targeted.
In order to address some of the key social challenges that we currently face in health care, the environment, national security, public education, energy, population, etc., organizations must come together and collaborate extensively. However, the infrastructure to facilitate such cross-sector collaborative social innovation does not exist. What is happening though is many youth connecting to each other at lightning speed…for drugs, crime, pornography and other social ills…because they haven’t learned a better way. This is happening even in poor countries as mobile phones are coveted.
“Re-educate” and “re-education,” from the Oxford Dictionary in general began around 1808 and was mentioned in George Orwell’s Animal Farm in 1945 “the Wild Comrades’ Re-education Committee to tame the rats and rabbits. To date, the only real re-education has been obtained by using severe tactics of brain-washing and torture; a heightened, more focused approach of command and control.
Our process of education continues to be built around stereotyped lecture halls populated with boring professors and teachers that want to be heard more than they want to teach or “educe” learning. And yet learning begins with muscles, first. The first and strongest memory is muscle memory. When students are seated in perfect rows, in a traditional restricted manner, their minds begin to wander and eventually fall asleep. The only way to engage brain function is to move muscles. Brain researchers know this and yet vast numbers of teachers do not.
Schools must be more than merely adults training children in ways to read, as happens in impoverished countries from well-meaning educators. I agree that it is better to know how to read something than not to, but if “How to live” is not taught additionally, we will continue to produce students that cause a drain on societies’ assets and that lead to apathetic, unproductive lives.
We must begin to realize that every person on the planet is either an asset or a liability and it is up to each one of us to do all we can to produce as many assets as possible, otherwise we are doomed. And because at this time, with great environmental problems and massive numbers of people that don’t know any better way but to struggle, we are close if not there, to a Tipping Point, being too late.
Recently, I returned from Shanghai, China. I was not expecting to learn what I did. I have been told by every education conference in the U.S. for several years, that Chinese students are far ahead of U.S. students in science, math and test scores. A popular film from 2008, Two Million Minutes, http://www.2mminutes.com/ has been shown in numerous education settings since being released. Most education leaders think it proves that U.S. students need to spend more time studying. It depicts a Chinese student as a focused, highly functioning student who constantly wants to improve and mirrors a couple of U.S. students that seem to be more interested in socializing than learning. After meeting with the Minister of Education in Shanghai at the Commission on International Trans-Regional Accreditation’s first Chinese conference, I learned of more serious problems. Simply, the Chinese government and education leaders are extremely worried because they do not have students that are able to invent things or analyze complex problems. Their country is in serious decline with environmental and social issues. They are not entrepreneurs, no matter what books we read, according to them. They may have money, but they don’t know what to spend it on. Their culture still wants to out-win others and they know that this is a serious problem to solving huge issues. They have not raised students to question anything; the very basis for scientific discovery.
In our own country, we have breakthroughs occurring in brain research and how one actually learns. Fear, control, stress and sitting still, all shuts down the brain’s ability to absorb or analyze information. And yet, we have billions of dollars being invested in large education solutions that require more “seat time.” Green Dot Schools in Los Angeles has used hostile takeover tactics, familiar to corporations to take over failing district schools. They have obtained billions of dollars from Bill Gates and the new education administration for the U.S. They immediately secure the schools using gun-carrying security guards. The parents, teachers and students have been relieved as order has returned back from crime-ridden schools. The media has produced many glowing reports explaining the genius of Green Dot Schools and money continues to pour in. KIPP -run schools have similar stories. “Keep the kids in school longer,” is a common thread for excellence. These solutions nothing new, are temporary and are an upgraded version of a prison. They will not be sustainable because our brains do not learn fast enough in this type of environment. And as the world is changing at such a rapid rate, new graduates are far behind what the world needs. For most students, they are not even remotely ready for employment or entrepreneurial ventures. This gap widens every year as we avoid answering the most primary questions:
“How best, do we learn?” And then, “What do we need to know?” And most important, our own search for significance in harnessing the very foundation of what motivates and inspires us:
· The need to be relevant.
· The need to be significant.
· The need to be lovable.
When these needs are not addressed, nothing else matters. A holistic education that includes body, mind, spirit, health, wealth and happiness is the only way our world is going to become sustainable, but it must happen quickly and in models of participation and cooperation.
StarShine Academy has tested its theories in some of the most dramatic environments with the most difficult families and children and is now considered one of the best solutions for k-12 education in the world. As we returned from China and once again were reminded of the seriousness of current world problems and the disconnect of world education solutions to correct it, we are compelled to begin a campaign to open 1000 schools and to train potential leaders for those schools. We must make education more relative to societies’ needs and to produce engaged, ethical citizens immediately.
For more info:
Trish McCarty: trish@eduresources.com
www.starshineacademy.org
http://www.brainrules.net
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
