Seriously, what is education for?

A few quotes from "Nothing Changes the World" on Education...

"Education, schools, the structure of society, and the norms that come with it prevent the child from understanding what freedom and intelligence really mean. If teachers and parents alike do not deeply understand this for themselves, then all we are doing is teaching the child what love is not. But if we could understand what is the origin of greed, ambition, fear, the false sense of security, and violence, we could begin to understand ourselves and we could begin to understand life."

"When education becomes a process of downloading endless useless information, practicing rituals, pushing discipline, normalizing behaviors, reporting, and comparing, then it is nothing less than barbaric because it saps the child’s energy to be free. And that child will not know love unless education nurtures them to be free of beliefs, free to question life, free to be curious. Then you leave the child untouched, with extraordinary energy to learn and live with intelligence and compassion. Until we can treat every living thing on this planet with the same beauty and fragility as the wings of a butterfly, we can never understand love."

Some new reflections:

Children that are awake to being caught up in a system that molds them to be something they are not in order to support a society which has you living in illusion face tremendous stress in this world.

Parents are often the greatest cause of this pressure because they place expectations on their children that sound like: “If your grades aren’t high enough, you’ll never get a good paying job.” My colleague grew up in a private school in Asia, and when he was eight years-old, he was lined-up in front of the class in descending order with a test score printed on his head. The child with the lowest score was scolded and told to work harder. How this does not cause psychological damage is beyond me. Is the teacher's role to discipline the child into mental depression (now or later in life)? Or does discipline mean something else? And guess what, the same thing basically happens at work? Can you see what "measurement" can do when not used in its proper context?

Unless education provides a safe space psychologically for children to learn, not out of conformity, but out of freedom, then all we are doing is creating violent human beings that may one day be called upon to slaughter other living beings.

Now is the time to figure it out - it's staring at you in the face every day! How longer can you ignore it? The love you seek is not to be sought. Stand completely still and you will see that the love you seek is already yours.

Love and light,

GC