Hello dear friends! I FEEL SO PASSIONATELY ABOUT THIS!
I believe that on a psychospiritual level, we are being invited to question the domination/colonised culture that many of us live in.
I believe we are invited to take stock of all the systems in place, including our economic and education system, and see all the ways that we are being invited to co-create new (old) ways of community, making a living, and learning.
The mainstream schooling system has a particular history, based on the past few hundred years, and went hand in hand with industrialisation.
Power-over, coercion, judgment, the devaluing of family and denial of a child’s innate desire to learn, have all been a part of this.
I have a vision of a world where all humans are valued and listened to. For learning pods, where mentors who are passionate about what they do, offer ways of learning that thing, whether it be gardening or architecture or writing or astrology. Where families are supported to live fulfilling lives based on connection and autonomy (love and will needs), whatever their age.
This would support parents to make a living doing what interests them, and children and all ages of humans to follow their callings and become proficient at what they most love.
The schooling system developed alongside the Industrial revolution. Both are based on outdated beliefs about human beings.
We are now in the information age. Ways of making a living have profoundly changed in the past 10 years, let alone the past 200. Ways of most helpfully supporting children to contribute to the emerging world have changed too.
My experience of my children never having been to school has helped me deeply deeply trust children and learning.
I’ve learnt to let go of cultural conditioning that values reading and writing as the most valuable skills, to come to deeply value all forms of learning, including simply learning through experience, the way we all learnt when we belonged to indigenous cultures.
With a Ph.D. from Cambridge university, and having worked as a Post Doc Fellow and an MA Lecturer, I’ve deeply explored learning in an academic setting.
I have also learnt way more from being a mother.
I value all the forms of learning I’ve been involved in.
I value my son’s way of learning through gaming as much as my daughter’s through reading and workbooks and dancing.
Cultural conditioning of should and have-to, of guilt and coercion, are all profound will-hurts that we are being invited to heal.
I believe we are being invited to reclaim our true sacred power and capacity for cooperation and collaboration.
The domination system is powerful. We internalise coercion and should’s and have-to’s when we are children, and then we can easily just continue down that track, fitting into the domination culture, rather than being invited to reclaim our true power and change the culture.
The domination colonised system based on disconnection (not honouring of Love) and coercion (not honouring of Will) has created so much destruction – of relationships, of family, of creativity, of callings, of inner trust, of our animal friends and of this beautiful planet we live on.
In working with mothers sharing their gifts and following their callings, I see again and again the impact of mainstream schooling systems that have been internalised. Self-doubt. Second-guessing. Self-judgement. Belief that oneself and one’s gifts aren’t valuable. Comparison. Fear. Repression of the sublime. Not sharing the gifts.
THIS ISN’T JUST HOW WE ARE AS HUMANS.
THIS IS A RESULT OF CULTURAL CONDITIONING.
Humans are naturally loving and creative, each individual a soul with unique gifts and callings.
Imagine if we all grew up in a culture who saw our soul, and supported us to follow our callings.
Imagine if we supported our children to learn in ways that helped them retain their LOVE of learning, their creativity, their trust in themselves, their passion for doing what they love, their willingness to share their gifts with an open heard and deep confidence, without coercion and grading and comparison and sitting down at desks for hours on end.
THE HUMAN SPIRIT IS AMAZING.
We can give our children so much more than what this present system and paradigm offers.
We can give ourselves SO MUCH MORE.
Here is our invitation.
To make a paradigm shift.
To reclaim our sacred power, rather than giving it away to governments based on power-over, and schooling systems based on power-over, and our own internalised self-coercion.
I love humans. I have such trust in us and our capacity to change, in really big and fast ways.
I TRUST YOU. I TRUST YOUR CHILD/REN.
AS A PARENT, YOU ARE POWERFUL AND CAPABLE AND ENOUGH.
YOUR CHILDREN ARE LOVING, WILLING BEINGS.
Big love! xoxox
If you want to learn more about the history of the mainstream education system, Google “Peter Gray History of Education” and “Ken Robinson Do Schools Kill Creativity”