Education gives emphasis to persistant submission to the mind. This reflects itself in the amount of time pupils and students spend at their desk, week after week, from the moment their education begins. Acquisition and interpretation of knowledge take priority.
An entire society pays a heavy price for this rigidity of view. Education marginalises other forms of learning while measuring the self-worth of children and students via exam results and grades. This heavy-handed approach promotes a culture of winners and losers, the successful and the failures.
Politicians and educators deceive themselves and the public when promoting the view that ‘success’ in exams depends upon the effort a child puts into their studies and, to a lesser degree, the skills of the teacher(s).
Parents like to think their child does well at school based on development of their abilities. The school does not know the range of abilities of the children outside feeding their mind with the importance of information and interpretation of it as the supreme goal. The abilities of many children may not fall into the academic box.
Children’s abilities may show as acts of kindness, creativity, sports, the arts, ability to make, assemble, repair what breaks down, tender the earth, a silence presence, an independent voice and much more. Education never recognises such qualities as significant compared to study and exams, never gives certificates and public appreciation for the marvels of children’s endeavours.
Education reveals a corruption in the absolutism of the priority it imposes on youngsters. Schools, colleges and universities fail the young through the determination to confine their abilities to the desk. Many children never recover from the trauma from the day they start primary school until they finish their studies into their late teens or early 20’s.
Have and Have Not Children
It has been reported on countless occasions children have a much greater chance of achieving better grades if they go to a private school with well-paid classroom teachers, plus the privilege of receiving private lessons outside of school hours.
While poor families struggle to put food on the table and find money to keep the home warm. Such families often lack the capacity to give all the necessary support a child needs for the classroom. Middle class families worry about their children at school struggling with the severity of the curriculum. Contemporary education has developed into child abuse stripping away from children much play, natural happiness and diverse social life to box them into study and hours of homework.
The politics of the left, right and centre might pass legislation for a nominal increase in ‘opportunity’ for a range of the young making their way through schooling. The issue runs much deeper than a little tinkering with opportunity or some redistribution of wealth through taxation to help the poor.
Happy pupils and students have much greater powers of attention, interest and concentration to make their mark in the contracted form of education available between the age of 5-18. Insistent pressure from adults at school and home rob children of happiness leaving them anxious and fearful of failure.
This current form of education of the mind has stamped its authority worldwide. Such narrow values can make a lifelong impact in the transition from childhood to adulthood. Education reveals itself as a form of bullying.
Our educational system lacks neuro-diversity/mind-diversity. Our monolithic system of schooling deprives the opportunity of expression through the diversity of potential in the brain/mind of the young. Our fine body of teachers have no opportunity to bring out the full range of talents, skills and abilities of all children.
In the absence of neuro-diversity, a monolithic education ranks as harmful and socially destructive as forcing everybody to conform to identify with white/heterosexual standpoints. We urgently need to develop a culture of neuro-diversity in schools and elsewhere.
It is not only children inhibited from their potential to experience a nourishing and fulfilled education. Our teachers find themselves also confined to measuring their worth through exam results of their pupils. They find themselves deprived too of the opportunity to develop and release their creative skills for the welfare of the children. They feel overworked in and out of the classroom and undervalued.
Around 35% of UK teachers in 2021 said they consider leaving their present position or retiring reported the National Education Union in a survey of 10,000 teachers.
The children do not have a choice about leaving the school through being overworked with their abilities undervalued.
A Well-Rounded Education
Apart from rare exceptions, pupils and students find themselves deprived of a well-rounded education in which knowledge/information contributes but does not dominate.
An expansive education offers support for the whole person – emotional development, social inter-action, mental development, exercise, outdoors, collective activities, environmental engagement, spiritual sensitivities and more. Why should development of the whole person take second place to the mind.
Such an education significantly reduces time at the desk, time studying, time on the screen and living under pressure to pass exams.
Politicians and educational authorities will never permit a deep-rooted change since they have benefitted from the current norm of education. They reveal a lack of creative imagination to develop a comprehensive education. Desire to achieve and aggressive self-interest take priority which students take on board as the purpose of schooling.
Pupils and students have no opportunity to receive an expansive education. They can only apply their minds to choosing from numerous subjects to ensure a mind-only education stays firmly in place.
Is it any wonder children and adults suffer so much mental health problems when their minds endure so much daily pressure to succeed?