Have you ever seen a group of soldiers marching in time, a mass of bodies with not one footstep out of place as they clump obediently to the tune of the Sergeant Major, LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT… not daring to misalign or appear out of place for fear of condemnation and punishment!
The marching soldiers may be analogous of our education model, a system asking us to be obedient to quite strict approaches to learning. If we don’t fit into such educational methods, are we open to being labelled a failure, stupid, or rebellious? If education leaves many people disengaged, anxious and despairing, then it may be time to reassess how we implement such a foundational aspect of our lives.
Almost four in five (78%) teachers have seen a pupil struggle with a mental health problem in the past year, with one in seven (14%) cases involving suicidal thoughts or behaviour. (1)
Such statistics should make us stop and consider how we offer schooling to our children to support them through the intensity of modern life.
What would such health outcomes (as above) be if we had more flexible, open educational methods – approaches that recognised the untapped genius in us all?
If you ask a small child to draw a picture of the sky and they paint it the colour green, does that make them wrong, or is there no right or wrong, only the child expressing their own way? We often look on the child as just immature and not yet intelligent enough to paint with ‘correct’ colours, but perhaps we overlook the wisdom that shines out in that offering. Maybe the child has tapped into knowledge and wisdom that symbolises everything they want to share in their chosen palette.
Instead of cherishing that, we look to squash out the green and replace it with our accepted blue. It’s a process of erosion, taking place over years, slowly suppressing the magic found in the child with the green tinted brush.
We look to replace that wisdom with a blue brush, every child holding onto that uniform brush tightly, for that is their accepted medium. And this is where we fail with our educational ways in that it doesn’t allow space for that colour to shine. Instead of bringing out our qualities, we are asked to all like and be good at the same way of thinking and learning.
No question there are certain things to be taught within formal education, but there is something inspiring in considering a teacher’s role is foremost to guide a child, to listen and connect with the individual, to engage by being attentive and understanding; to encourage each person to feel valued and able to contribute in their unique way; to cherish and offer confirmation as the precious people that we all are. Such an approach may also greatly support the teachers within such a system.
Educational experiences can be magical when we place importance on this wisdom and inner knowing. It’s time to say yes to flexible learning, say yes to valuing individual expression, and say a big YES to the child with the green tinted brush!
References:
- Campbell, D. (2019). Children face mental health epidemic, say teachers. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/23/schoolchildren-facing-mental-help-epidemic [Accessed 15 Apr. 2019].
By Stephen
Further Reading:
True Education and Healing Matters
What would our Education be like if we Truly Supported our Kids to Connect to their Body?
Education is Good: or is it?
77 Comments
“The marching soldiers may be analogous of our education model, a system asking us to be obedient to quite strict approaches to learning. If we don’t fit into such educational methods, are we open to being labelled a failure, stupid, or rebellious? If education leaves many people disengaged, anxious and despairing, then it may be time to reassess how we implement such a foundational aspect of our lives.”
I came across this recently Stephen when I attended a school meeting, at this meeting one of the school governors asked why the children were not exceeding the expectations of the school curriculum set for them? He was inferring that they should be like robots and that they should attain the standards set by the school. There was no empathy for the children at all, they were being assessed as a commodity.
At the ripe old age of 50+ I can feel the joy of being confirmed and appreciated as a ‘child with the green tinted brush’… being enjoyed and accepted for who I am and for my unique expression and take on things. This of course starts with my relationship with myself, as in how accepting I am of myself. And yes the more we do this the more we can offer this same space and honour to others…
The more I am around children, the more I understand that they are constantly communicating much deeper things than we realise. Just because they don’t subscribe to ‘adult’ ways of speaking or drawing for that matter we overlook and play dumb to what they have to say. Convenient, as so often they are calling us out and pulling us up to return to a multi-dimensional understanding of life.
So many of us are so caught up in the doing of life that we are completely incapable of seeing and understanding the absolute beauty and wisdom that children inherently are.
I agree with you Joseph, recently I engaged with a very young child and we played a very simple game they had made up. I had to follow in their footsteps as they went from room to room. We had such fun and giggled as we went along. What this showed me is that there is a simplicity to life which is very joyful we had so much fun just being with one another as we both connected to something much deeper than ourselves. It was a sharing of the beauty of who we truly are. Children can show us these delights as they seem closer to the magic of God, to them it just is. There is no doubt, hesitation, they just accept they can play in heaven.
Joseph totally agree with your comment children can actually teach us so much if we stopped to listen to them and treated them as adults in a young body. I have so many experiences of being with young children and young adults who seem to understand life at a more subtle level than me , it is a reminder that we all carry this deeper knowledge we are just not choosing to tap into it.
We have created an education system that is a factory, creating something we require to come out the end to a standard, someone or body has decided what the minimum standard will be. Food processing plants still have workers that must reject items that don’t fit the standard. The EU has standards for bananas to not be too bendy. Shops are now being pressured to sell ugly vegetables rather than reject them because they look different. Do we reject students that are different?
I was definitely a bent banana at school and now, a few years on, really appreciate this.
Steve and Matilda I can definitely relate to being the bent Banana at school, I disliked school intently and couldn’t wait to leave. I hated that we had to keep our attention to the front of the class and conform to a standardised education one size fits all mentality.
I didn’t really conform at school. Labelled and Told I wouldn’t amount to much. I work with people with learning disabilities who get similar treatment. Non conformance doesn’t mean that what you bring to life is worthless. It fact it’s greater because it’s from outside the box to start with. There’s no growth if we all remain inside the box, knowing only same old same old.
There is not one of us that is not spun from The Body of God and so there is not one of us that doesn’t reflect God in some way but we write people off as being useless or worthless or both and often when we do, it leads to them writing themselves off and sometimes for the rest of their lives.
Leigh well said many of us get labeled at school as non conformists because we do not fit the model that has been determined as the acceptable standard. This can be excruciatingly painful as you get to feel the rejection of the group that ostracizes you for being the odd one out. There is no understanding when we go through this process of education that the system has been deliberately set up to only reward those who comply to the regurgitation of information that is our current education system. I have always likened education to be like a sausage machine by the time you have been in the system for 12 or so years you are supposed to come out the same size, fit and format as everyone else and if you don’t then you are the reject, that will not amount to much in life. How is it possible we can say to young adults as they leave school, that they will not amount to much, that they are already on the scrap heap of life.
I adore babies and children as they live closer to God than I currently choose to do. Through their innocence I again get to feel and experience that open hearted playfulness that is so yummy to watch and be a part of. I guess it allows that child part of me to feel what it is like to be unfettered by the impositions that we are all saturated with as we grow up. Watching children I am awakened to the possibility that we can in one generation raise our children to live a different model of life one that is sustaining and supports the child to reach their full potential whatever that may be.
Our education system has become a well-oiled machine that has created a picture of what we should look like at the end of the process. The blood, sweat and tears from those that work in this system are often not appreciated, and those who paint the sky green, are often crushed by the gears of the machine. What would the system of education be if we supported everyone that enters the system and celebrate and appreciate what they bring?
We are nowhere near accepting that children are very knowing naturally so. We live in a society that shuts children down at a very young age. This to me is pure evil and is done with a collective intent and purpose because we cannot bear that a child is a symbol of God and all that he is and all that we can be. We have all contributed to this rubbing out of a child’s natural joy and vitality for eons.
What a fabulous expression ‘Say yes to the green tinted brush’! Yes indeed. If we accept each others expression we may well start to see things that we haven’t allowed ourselves to see to that point. Perhaps because we have been wearing blue tinted spectacles and therefore have been influenced as to the colour of the sky!
‘If education leaves many people disengaged, anxious and despairing, then it may be time to reassess how we implement such a foundational aspect of our lives.’ With higher numbers of pupils feeling disengaged from school and withdrawn from life, with higher numbers of pupils self harming and the increasing number of pupils committing suicide, it is clear that we need to understand how much education plays its part in this and how we can provide more loving and nurturing centres of learning so that pupils feel a sense of community and belonging, being treated as a holistic whole rather than a simple statistic that generates results and data.
Yes, so important to support them with a sense of community and feeling their value within that community. It should not be hard, and it should not result in poor mental health.
If we were raised being honoured for the wise and wonderful children we naturally are, we would then become the adults who in turn will honour the children around us. But unfortunately we live in a world where children are considered to be empty vessels that need filling instead of a little being with a huge wisdom and a way of looking at the world with wondrous eyes, eyes that we have forgotten how to use.
Children can be our best teachers if we only just let them.
Children are awesome at teaching us the wisdom we have forgotten!
The expressions that are seen as signs of poor understanding and failure through the lens of the system, are actually wisdom pouring through children. One day that wisdom will be celebrated and then seen as completely normal.
It would be so very possible for a flexible education system. However, the demand is not there as it doesn’t fit the regimented society waiting for the children to fit in at the end of school.
It is not the children who are failing, it is the system.
We have created the system, that its sole purpose is to make round pegs to fit into round holes. If you are different a shape and unwilling to be pounded into something you are not, you are excluded from the paper chase and rejected for being non-compliant.
The forces that work tirelessly at derailing us in our return to God have purposefully engineered it so that anyone who even faintly resembles any aspect of our original nature will get picked on, stigmatised, ostracised, bullied, heckled, victimised etc. Basically we’re told to tow the line and then we’ll be left alone. And it’s the same with our kids, conform or suffer the consequences.
The genuine expression of a child must be always honoured, as everything has a meaning in their communication. Our presence as educators is a forever observer light that supports them to be here being themselves. No more and no less.
So true Amparo, every expression is a communication and it is time we stopped and listened to the movements and expression to better understand the communication.
When we communicate with children we can either ridicule and belittle or we can confirm them in their other worldliness.
Have you ever pondered, who gave the names for colours that are universal? A blind person knows what the sun feels like on their face and the smell of freshly cut grass. Why do we place so much authority into the one sense that can be fooled so easily, our sight? When we paint what we feel, there are never rules. Is this what we need to encourage in our children.
Brilliant example – we make life about being the best soldier in the platoon (and end up fighting each other in the process). The irony is there was actually no war to start with, except for the one that tricked us away from being gorgeous.
Sue what ever happened to the word ‘curious’ Children are naturally curious about anything they see and or touch. But some how the word ‘curious’ gets changed to the word ‘nosey’ which has a completely different feeling to it such as doing something you shouldn’t and that’s the quickest way to shut down a child’s curiosity by making them feel less than.
The Appreciation and Intimacy that we share with children leaves them the space to pursue what they feel is True, and as long as we set boundaries that come from our Livingness and not just a dictation, children explore and share so much about what there bodies are feeling, thus we are opening up True expression from a young age.
Making education magical now that sounds more like it ✨ not pulling things out of hats!! but honouring the magic and beauty in all children, young people and adults as well as the Universe we are all part of.
The magic that is in most kids lives is an injection of ‘man-made magic’ in the form of Walt Disney or Father Christmas but there is a limitless magic that is fundamental to who we all are and it is that that should be taught in schools. Be the living magic of God that you already are.
We all have the innocence and wonder of a child within it’s the magic of God that never leaves us.
Thank you. This has invited me to explore the clear differentiation between things that we teach in schools that can be based on right and wrong and the so much more that needs to depart from this construct and be about nurturing and honouring all of our wisdom, potential, qualities and particular way we can contribute to and be part of life.
‘Educational experiences can be magical when we place importance on this wisdom and inner knowing.’ Absolutely when we allow the magic of another to be lived and be expressed and not try to define it, say what it can or can’t be or put into boxes that can be ticked so ‘we’ understand or it feels better for ‘us’. We have a lot to learn and also let go of here.
Heavens I have to agree about presuming children don’t know and therefore not working from a place of building what they do know and supporting them to find their place in the world from those strengths. I have learnt, and am constantly reminded, not to underestimate the wisdom that can be shared from the younger members of our community.
When you describe the idea of the child not being able to express themselves and having to conform to a socially accepted norm, I can picture a the rebellion of the young person who knows it is not who they are or how they want to express. I love the courage of those children who insist they want to paint the sky green because it calls me to consider if I have been aligning without questioning and therefore no longer see what is there to be seen.
Lucy many of us will be able to relate to what you are sharing here. We are all taught from day dot to conform without questioning what is there to be seen. Just that sentence alone shows by the use of the word seen the setup we have fallen for. I’m just beginning to understand our eyes receive information first, then we reinterpret what we have received.
“Such statistics should make us stop and consider how we offer schooling to our children to support them through the intensity of modern life. ” I agree, and instead we keep on going and going whilst ignoring the obvious signals that the way we structured society is not working.
Why must children colour in the lines? Are these boundaries we are subliminality imposing on them? Does this stifle our natural curiosity of all things and cap us in what we are allowed to do? What if we were allowed and encouraged to express what we feel in our painting, the world we live in?
A definite yes to valuing individual expression (as long as it does not harm another) as well as to question what we have confirmed to and why. I was observing a police man in London the other day walking and what I could feel was how he was walking his training and what he had learnt, he was walking the consciousness of the police and protection rather than allowing himself to walk his truth.
Interesting observation Vicky, that the policemen was walking in an alignment to a consciousness of the ‘police and protection’. Is it possible that the education system is another alignment to a consciousness, and are these seemingly different consciousnesses actually all stemming from one which is impulsing us to behave in the many ways that we do without the awareness of the fact its all coming from the same source?
Yes I completely agree here that these statistics are shocking and a sign that something is seriously going wrong with how we are doing things.
We don’t honour the joy a child feels in expressing themselves, as adults we can hold a very narrow idea of what’s wrong and right instead of allowing the child the freedom to express.
How many of us routinely condense the expansive beingness of our kids by insisting that they constantly do. Do this, do that, be here, be there, it’s endless and although i appreciate that there are certain things that need to be done, we could also be so much more aware of the quality of both our beingness and our child’s beingness rather than being solely focused on getting things done at the expanse of everything else.
There is a street in London that is an authorized, graffiti art gallery in a very long tunnel under Waterloo station called Leake Street. There are no limits or rules, just self-expression that is constantly changing and evolving. All surfaces of the tunnel are fair game. Is this a place where children that were once were told to not paint the sky green and now are free to express what they feel?
Wow these statistics are frightening
“Almost four in five (78%) teachers have seen a pupil struggle with a mental health problem in the past year, with one in seven (14%) cases involving suicidal thoughts or behaviour. (1)”
Is anyone stopping to ask the question why is this? I’m 63 years old and I feel certain that when I was at school we did not have such figures, so what on earth has gone on in the intervening years? And if we were to tie these figures up with our overall health then I feel the statistics would be bleak indeed. But we just seem to carry on as a society as though nothing is happening to us?
Yes our capacity to normalise what we should consider to be extreme and acute is one of our great ignorances.
Yes Matilda, in the army of illusion, normalising is as impactful as a nuclear bomb.
We are slowly numbing ourselves, to everything that we are shunning our part in not taking ownership for our part of being responsible for the actions around us by not speaking up?
Shocking is the state of mental health of our children these statistics tells us the system is more than cruel.
We certainly bombard our children with many ideals and beliefs, believing we have to shape them to cope and be ‘successful’ in life. We don’t stop to consider that the life model we have is one we have generated and created and therefore it is one we can uncreate or change! So rather than squashing children to fit the model in society we have, how about honouring our children, nurturing them from the love we are – recognising the love they are, so that we can change society to fit a model that rests purely and squarely on the appreciation of the gold that is innately there but one we have hidden under the surface and bring it to the fore?
Honestly – it is very hard for teachers not to be caught up in the education consciousness because a) they went through the system themselves and were ‘successful’ in it and b) they are invested in making education as it is work. This consciousness then permeates every other facet of life as the competition, comparison and idea of what intelligence and success is continues beyond into work and family life. The cycle begins anew with each generation and gets cemented more and more in the body. The levels of withdrawal from so many students are a testament to how much they feel this and how disempowered they feel in the face of this energetic onslaught.
We cause so much harm to children when we do not know the pictures we hold about how things should be and how an intelligent and successful student looks. If there was the understanding globally that every child had within them all they need to express and expand in the world, in their learning then the approach by our educational frameworks and institutions would be very different.
The anxiety and worry so many of our primary children have these days is far more intense that it was 25 years ago. As curriculum pressure has increased and results at this tender age has become “more important” so has the increase of stress on pupils (and teachers). The UK government’s answer is to provide more mental health support services in secondary schools. It seems they haven’t joined the dots… high teacher turn over/teacher shortages and high mental ill health with pupils. What if, as you say Stephen we had flexible methods of teaching and took a different approach. We should be tapping into the natural joy and curiosity that all children hold.
The fact that the UK government can’t join the dots between the pressure they place on students and teachers and the mental health issues of students and high teacher turnover says a lot about the the kind of intelligence promoted in education and how that impacts on relationships and society in general. It feels very cold, insensitive, and ignorant or oblivious to what’s truly going on. This is what happens when mind centered intelligence is focused on and not the intelligence of the heart and whole body.
Yes, we place a great deal of care and attention on the students but we do not appreciate the care and attention needed on the health and wellbeing of the staff. In any business high staff turnover is a red flag, time to pay attention to this one because they support our next generation to know the world is a caring and loving place, or not.
Ah the old sledgehammer of wrong and right. Down it comes and everything that falls on the ‘wrong’ side of it often gets condemned for life. Take away wrong and right and you have us and the freedom to be who we naturally are.
Stephen what came to mind whilst reading your article was the Pink Floyd song and video ‘Another brick in the wall’. A song about exactly what you are sharing here and the video depicts ‘vacant’ looking kids on a conveyor belt disappearing into a mincer and coming out as sausage meat!
Agreed, the pressure to conform goes all the way up the chain and affects teachers just as much as the chidren and young people. Education has become a factory for churning out conformity and mediocrity.
Yes – we have such a prescribed way of doing things and such an inherent belief that there is value in only one way that we fail to see and miss completely the utter gold in the expression that is in each and every child. This is not only to the detriment of the child but to the whole of society, which misses out on all the colour and different angles that make up the whole.
Expression is everything, everything is known by it’s expression. The only way to know God is through our expression and so what an evil process our current education system is, it takes the closest living thing that we have to God on earth, ‘our kids’ and it suppresses and condenses them to such an extent that their expression no longer resembles the expression of God. And what’s even worse is that we measure a child’s merit on how good they are at fitting into the education system and what’s even worse is that kids measure their own self worth on their ability to fit into the system. The system needs an overhaul of such magnitude that there will be very little left of our current model. And I say hallelujah to that!
When do we consider the gold we are burying in our children with the bureaucracy as a tool that is used on teachers, who is supporting this system by staying silent?
The way we are educated stays with us for life, often there are memorable teachers we still know by name for good or bad reasons. The original meaning of the word was to ‘bring out’ but these days it’s made to squash students into a box. This has a great impact on our health in school and beyond.
Yes, what you share here is true Leigh, our education stays with us for life and actually influences for generations to come. Because what we learnt, the fears, difficulties and coping mechanisms we had, then get loaded onto our children in the hope of making their transition easier but in fact making it harder because they are no better equipped to deal with it than we were.
My god, these statistics really did shock me. It made me consider how my behaviours contribute to such an epidemic and can’t help but feel that in my choices to abuse myself through food, negative thoughts and so on I have a part to play. The responsibility of taking care of our bodies has a much deeper meaning when we know that everything we do impacts others. Because when we don’t take care of our bodies & ourselves, we feel weak, sometimes we can feel like we don’t care and in that state, our words, actions and thoughts towards others can be just the same as those of a Sergeant teaching his soldiers to stay in line – squashing & cutting out the sensitivity of all around us.
Have you ever been in a storm that has spawned a tornado? One of the tell-tail signs is the sky turns green. It is a message to seek shelter.
The use of the analogy of marching soldiers is interesting. 2,000 years ago Roman soldiers when they came to a bridge had to break from the rigid march and walk at their own pace or risk causing the bridge to collapse from the imposing vibrations.
Through our current education system we take the absolute dazzling brilliance of uncut diamonds and shape it into bog standard glass. Shame on us.
The education system has become a machine that takes our children, as raw materials and treats them like dough. The process mixes,, adds pressure to flatten and then the cookie-cutter finishes the process. Then they are sent out into the world to be eaten by the biggest machine; we call life.
This is very true Steve my Dad who passed away many years ago said we were sausage meat put into a machine that turned everyone into strings of sausages. He told me this when I was starting school over 58 years ago so we do know that the education system doesn’t work. It bludgeons us in such a way that we are crushed by the relentless requirements to be good, do better and out compete one another, the list is long. Our current form of education has never worked and will never work and tinkering with it doesn’t work either. To learn something by rote does not make you intelligent.
“Our current form of education has never worked and will never work and tinkering with it doesn’t work either”, I agree Mary, it needs a major overhaul.
Great article, Stephen! I also know of people who were told as young children by teachers and even parents: ‘your drawings are junk’, ‘colouring is outside the lines’, ‘disobedient and uncooperative’, ‘couldn’t sing to save yourself’, ‘can’t remember your lines’, ‘always do something different from what you’re told’, ‘hopeless at maths’, ‘stupid’, ‘bad’, ‘pretty not brainy’, ‘brainy not pretty’, ‘pathetic at spelling’, etc. Those people have carried the pain of that belittling abuse into late adulthood, so much so that at one point I felt to offer workshops in getting past ‘performance abuse’!
Dianne I have recently been looking at anxiety and stress around performing, it’s actually quite horrific and started at an early age, it’s around everything from getting things right in school, exams, presenting – even being with people socially can feel the same, a performance to get things right, pressure to please others, etc. I would sign up immediately to your course, it would be so valuable to explore this further with support.
You’re spot on Melinda when you say that people feel ‘performance anxiety’ purely from being in the company of others and when you think about it that’s intense. What on earth have we done to ourselves when being with others, (which in truth is the most natural and joyous thing for us all) has become one of our most loathed and arduous tasks, so much so that most of us feel relief when we are by ourselves and limit those who we are with to a very select few?
Yes. We cannot underestimate the impact of our words either ‘belittling’ or ‘building’. How can it ever make sense to actively reduce someone when we have every opportunity to support, confirm and encourage?