Reinventing Education

This moment requires a radical reorientation of education and realignment of purpose for both adults and children. We must shift education from the current model of shaping children into components of an economic machine and cultivate the natural-born creative and spiritual energies so the future world can reap the harvest of full-awakened and educated beings. We have been so “busy” educating our children that we have missed the purpose of education: a happy, good, loving life.

Are we missing the deeper meaning and higher purpose of learning?

Have we forgotten about the spirit of the child, the purpose of life, the unique and fragile expression of a passionate and integrated life? The Happy Child: Changing the Heart of Happiness, Steven Harrison

Never before in history and nowhere else in the world has so much time, energy, attention and money been devoted to raising children as here in the U.S. Collectively as a nation, we invest billions of dollars every year in services for children.

There are more child specialists - teachers, psychologists, social workers, pediatricians, pediatric nurses, counselors, school principals, recreation leaders and parent educators - who devote their lives to the welfare of children than in any other country in the world.

Our children have more of everything from toys, to resources, to laptops than children have ever had anywhere. But in spite of all this and much more, who would want to be a child today? Not me, I think it is a terrible time for childhood.

It is quite difficult, in adult life, to rid ourselves of the education in self-rejection and lack of self-trust that we have received at home and in school. How tragically blind and ridiculous it is, therefore, to purport to be interested in the self-esteem of children, while all the while we continue to disempower them and psychologically damage them.

We need to re-imagine education for ourselves and for our children. As we work to remember the sacred truths of life, we should teach children to appreciate the goodness of nature as well as natural law. Without gratitude for life and appreciation for a sense of beauty, our world will not survive. Native Americans have known this for thousands of years and natural law is taught within every American Indian Tribe.

One very important thing that education not only neglects in its programs but even fails to mention as a goal is responsibility. Response-ability is the ability to respond. We all have a responsibility to do our spiritual homework and to cultivate good relations with all of life. We are all partly responsible for the current mess that is the state of the world and we are all part of the solution for healing what must be healed. We must re-learn and teach what is natural. We need to re-learn how natural medicines keep us healthy.

Natural medicine is exercise, is prayer, is meditation, is love, is kindness, is compassion, is community, is nature, is plant medicine. Natural medicine is clean air, clean water and healthy soil. Natural medicine is fresh healthy fruits, veggies and meat. These medicines lead to a good life. You do not need “an MD” to understand what is natural and what is medicine. These are natural laws, God’s laws. Follow these laws and we will have a good life.