Education

 I watched a webinar by Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author of Braiding Sweetgrass, and she said "An educated person is a person who knows their gifts and how to share them with the world."  This made me think about how extremely far away we are as a society from that definition of an educated person.  A definition like that would allow for everyone to follow their calling, instead of becoming thousands of dollars in debt to the education money making machine.  A definition like that would allow a trades person to feel equal to a wall street banker.  A definition of education that includes the use of and sharing of our gifts would allow each and everyone of us to experience joy and peace.

Our industrialized education system has a monopoly on determining what people should learn and how they should learn it.  It has been monetized into a system where only the privileged can enter the system.  Our ideas about work have been skewed so much that we believe only the educated deserve to find work.  Try finding a job that pays more than minimum wage without having a degree to back up your abilities and you'll find there are no jobs to be found.  Our prejudice shines when a person not educated in our country applies for a position.  If they don't have a North America education, then they have no education at all.  Go back to school and prove that you obtain a degree in our schools, then we shall see if you are worthy.

Our children are really the ones who suffer.  Yes, there are some children who excel in the classroom.  They learn best through reading and writing.  Their gifts lie in academics and they would be content in our traditional classroom, except that the majority of the students in the room do not learn through sitting quietly for hours on end being told what to learn and how to learn it.  They are the explorers and the creatives; the tactile learners; the energetics or perhaps they are the dreamers; the spiritual; the artist.  Teachers have an impossible situation these days.  They are asked to teach all of these individuals at the same time within very limited parameters.  30 students, each with different gifts- some gifts are to be nurtured while others are to be squelched.  It's important that everyone fit in and follow the expectations.  Add to that all of the anxiety, anger and fear that many students carry with them and you end up with a toxic soup.  Teachers being assaulted by children as young as 4 years old.  Bullying has reached all new levels of awful.  Classrooms are being evacuated because a violent child has taken control of the classroom.  

Our education system is broken.  Our society is broken.  It's time for change.  It's time for a new story.