Can we live and learn outside the "box" of current education reform efforts?
Do we dare consider ways for reconceiving education reform that depart from the typical attempts to superficially and narrowly frame needed reforms? Do we, by contrast, draw upon multiple intelligences to expose the blind spots and hidden potentials within our humanity that would revolutionize education? Ideally, in a progressive society, education shapes and is shaped by us, with each learning level* providing a transformative trigger which points within and without simultaneously. We cannot allow entrenched bureaucracies and political machinations within legislatures and school districts to perpetuate societal alienation, denial, dysfunction, and corruption by modeling the same at public expense. Otherwise, we get the educational system, and world, in general, that we deserve. And the best that money can buy will never be good enough.
*Learning is considered here to lie along a continuum from conception to after-death, with all age levels and generations holding a part of our collective transformative power without the imposition of a self-serving faction or elite.
Can dysfunctional schools teach us anything
about what's missing between the budgets?
How can we be in "our" schools
but not be of them?
Know what you are before anything.
Shed what you are not.
Do you really want to know?
To be free is our first responsibility.
We must be free to know freedom.
My vision for education
ALLOWS
NURTURES
ILLUMINATES
REVEALS
CONCEIVES
BLESSES
Too often TRAINING (on behalf of the education industry) MISCONSUMES, CONDITIONS, SUBJECTS, INDOCTRINATES, WITHHOLDS, COERCES, DEPRIVES, ENFORCES, EXCLUDES, INDUSTRIALIZES, TECHNOCRATIZES, AND MILITARIZES.
"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits and rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in square holes. The ones who do things differently. They're not fond of school, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them, because they change things. They push the human race forward. It's funny to think that great men like Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., Henry David Thoreau, and Mahatma Ghandi were once considered crazy, but it's true. Time and time again they were called foolish for pursuing their dreams. And time and time again, they pushed the envelope and defied all odds to turn their dreams into reality. They had the audacity to stand up in a world of disbelievers and risk everything, all in the search for truth."
Saviz Sepah, 18
from his 2002 Valedictorian Speech, Scripps Ranch High School, San Diego, CA
I feel that any real student in the broadest and truest sense would not
stand by and allow education to devolve without a sincere and
concentrated effort to turn things around in a big way. The official talk
needs strong legs to walk education into the light upon which consistent
progress depends. I believe the best way we can encourage the sincere
effort that students such as myself are making is to include them as
partners in the improvement of education - rather than to denigrate or
treat them as disruptive - or retaliate against them for challenging the
failing status quo. Ultimately, through cooperation - or the lack of it -
we all share a similar fate.
Education today is an accomplice, wittingly or unwittingly in truth decay
and truth death. Schools enforce questionable codes and regimens, and
condition stifling conformity to a status quo that has got to go. Academic
cloning and high-tech droning on any level merely updates the domination
of a power elite over innocence and truth. Nothing new. Meanwhile, our
primal presence as human explorers finds little meaning in contrived
curricula and soulless advancement into more sophisticated forms of
techno-slavery and alienation. Instead of learning ways to live that
do no harm to the developing child we skew** priceless youth
with expensive interventions that trash their souls. The physical sciences
ignore or override existing unified bodies and fields with artificial and
non-renewable ones and we continue to think in terms of escaping our
pollution rather than really consider what it says about the diminishing
breadth of our intelligence and educative will. Education as industry
amounts to the systematic elimination of all soulful connection and
compassion that doesn't serve the industry's goals. We are fed
manufactured markers for success that are based on current political
and financial ends, and secret and not-so-secret deals that we can do
less and less about. What to do about this should be at the heart of
our curricula. Humanity, as a whole must graduate toward a greater
degree of collective sanity or we are just paid accomplices or victims
of the same.
**Skewing amounts to anything that imbalances us spiritually, mentally,
emotionally, or physically. We can also skew ourselves by mischoosing
on each of these levels. It is certainly possible to learn from our skewage,
but, unfortunately, one skew tends to lead to another until a crisis intervenes
and corrective steps are taken.
How we initiate and first cultivate a bond with our "offspring" sets the
tone for future human development. Any self-knowledge we lack will retard
parenting because much of the child's presence and energy will be
consumed mirroring consciously or subconsciously any parental lack or
imbalance. Often, children bring a contrasting or complementary truth or
way of life that parents may resist or frustrate in their own ignorance.
Our experience of our own parents is a lifeling lens through which
we tend to process (or perhaps fail to process) the universals of gender
as well as unique characteristics of other people. --Thomas James Darling
Fools conceive and parent cluelessly where angels fear to tred. From the
confusion of misparenting - the child is subjected to institutionalized
hoop-jumping in order to become more valuable to the current power structure.
Do we ask what does EACH child want or do we channel each generation into
seving the needs and desires (many illusory, myth or ego-based, and even
predatory) of more established generations? Why reinforce what is
overdue for reform? More to the point, why belabor myopic albeit widespread
education reform efforts when educational vitality requires a revolution in
parenting to begin with?
Where and when do we begin to be
proactive? Is conscious conception too ego-threatening, mold-breaking, or
spiritually
daunting to enter our educational psychology for even one generation?
Have we the spiritual integrity to endure the painful recognition of the
full-spectrum vitality, courage and curiosity that has already been parented
and schooled out of us? And what is necessary to recognize and test our
redemptive potential?
To sum up, in reconceiving education reform we must abandon the
inherited blinders which skew loving and learning in the first place and
look boldly into the blind spots of our individual and collective
psyches. We need to keep looking in true faith to and through each other.
Only when we are ready to consciously conceive future generations to
school us will classroom Earth find the God-Us at home - and well.
Tom Darling
edutrue@lycos.com>
RECONSIDER WHO KNOWS BEST.
CAN ANYONE KNOW WHAT IS ULTIMATELY
BEST FOR YOU BETTER THAN YOU?
HOW DOES ONE ASSESS THE OPENESS OR
DEPTH OF ONE'S OWN MIND?
WHAT KIND OF SOCIETY ARE WE ASKING
STUDENTS TO FIT INTO OR SERVE?
ARE WE ASKING STUDENTS TO FOLLOW
IN STEPS THAT MIGHT ACTUALLY
BE MIS-STEPS FOR US?
Consciously Conceiving Humanity
As A Whole
It is of continuing concern that our concepts of ideal relationship are
so immature and incomplete. Would-be parents dream of children who will
look like them, fill-in gaps in their own humanity, or add "meaning" or
purpose to their lives. Parents who are often strangers to themselves,
and each other, are willing to invite yet more strangers into their
incomplete lives through baby roulette.
As my increasing alarm concerning the overall human population explosion
grows, it becomes necessary to look at the irrationality and cultural-myopia
of others and ask what is overriding common sense. As much as I want to
visualize humanity's star rising, these days the reality is that questionable
conformity, cultural expectations, wishful thinking, blind optimism, desperation,
fear and unconscious realms tend to dominate conscious reasoning and
common sense.
I used to feel that current humanity would learn from its excesses such
as overpopulation, and respond with increased quality over quantity.
It's been disheartening to see overall quality of preparation for
parenting continue to fall despite obvious signs that we have a quality
deficit not a quantity deficit. I attribute this to the fact that humankind
will resort by default to subconscious control when conscious control of
our destiny is lacking. That children are not receiving a proper
introduction into this world and a healthy two-parent upbringing does
not bode well for our future.
My view continues to be: Wait to have children until preparation is more
complete or humanity will continue to fall behind its full-spectrum potential.
Let us not expect a saint or angel to attend an inadequate reception or
bless a dysfunctional home. And let us not misschool ourseves to death
while the dabates over education reform drag on erupt in further folly.
What we currently have the courage to see is only the tip of the illusion.
Love in it's entirety is always the necessary quality in the present situation.
It is up to each of us to recognize and surrender to that quality before we
attempt to reform anything.
Breaking the code of denial is the first step toward a more amazing education!
A job isn't honest,
if the WHOLE TRUTH
will get you fired.
To deliver Truth
start with the Truth
of what you are.
Only what we really are can save us
from what we aren't.
Leave a happy trail
behind your heart
and you'll never
fall behind.
Thomas James Darling
class_artist@yahoo.com
These pages were updated 10_JAN_2017.
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