The Spirit
of Ma’at Vol 1, No 10
by Drunvalo
It is
becoming clear to everyone - teachers, parents, the government, and the experts
- that education must change. The New Children are bored at best with the old
way, and in the worst-case scenarios, they are being deeply damaged by a system
that runs totally counter to their natures. Unless we do something, our
children are not going to listen to us anymore. They are longing for an educational
system that has heart as well as knowledge, a system that is innovative and
perhaps surprisingly unique, as the computer was when it appeared. An
educational system that brings back curiosity and wonder.
There
have been a few innovators, such as Drs. Rudolf Steiner and Maria Montessori,
who explored new possibilities of teaching. But for the most part their
proposed educational systems were and still are on the outer edge of
acceptability.
Now,
however, the world is catching up with the necessity for change. Everywhere, we
can see the buds of a new educational consciousness getting ready to burst into
flower. The rote memory system which is still the mainstay of our children's
schooling will soon be replaced by concepts that would have been undreamable a
few generations ago.
People
like John Taylor Gatto, winner of the New York State Teacher of the Year award
and author of Dumbing Us Down, have made it extremely clear that we have major
problems in our school system. Gatto has put the United States on educational
alert. He, and others like him, have made it clear, not only to the schools
themselves but to those who are in power, that we must change now. Tomorrow is
too late.
In this
spirit of change, private and charter schools are beginning to experiment with
the basic concepts of what learning is all about. America is becoming the test
tube for what just may prove to be an educational Renaissance
But the
situation is complex. Much more is contemplated, for example, than simple
changes of curriculum. In some cases, like the Sudbury model, curriculum is
eliminated entirely, with surprisingly positive results. There are in fact a
myriad of different concepts abroad as to how our educational system can best
be recreated to meet our needs.
There
are four different ''houses'' in which education takes place, and it is the
shift from the public schoolhouse to other areas that is perhaps the most
significant change that has already begun.
The
four areas are:
1. The
Public Schools
What
are they doing, if anything? From my observation, the government would like to
respond to the perceived crisis, for to do so has become politically correct.
The appearance of charter schools (see below) is evidence of this. But a true understanding
of the problems and their possible solutions is probably not going to come from
our government. It will be people like you and me, along with educators who
truly care, who will find the way out of the crisis that has become our
children's daily lives. If you wish to read what the government has to say, go
to ed.gov.
2.
Charter Schools
Charter
schools are schools that are funded by the government, but are privately run.
The appearance of charter schools has allowed private enterprise and ingenuity
to come into play in educating our children. Since 1991, 36 states, the
District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have signed charter-school legislation
into law.
Both
the government and the education world are carefully watching this experiment in
education. For more information see: US News Charter Schools report, and
uscharterchools.org.
3.
Private Schools
Like
charter schools, private schools have the freedom to try new ideas. This
approach will of course create successes as well as failures. But because they
are dependant upon student tuition, the private schools do not have the
financial freedom that the charter schools enjoy. A correlary of this financial
dependancy is that only those children can attend whose parents can afford the
hefty tuition.
4. Home
Schooling
For
many who cannot afford private schools for their children, home schooling has
become the only practical solution to what many parents perceive as the
unacceptable alternative: sending their children to public schools.
In
recent years, home schooling has become a normal and accepted practice. And
despite what we may think of as the simplicity of this approach, home schools
are contributing new ideas which may change education forever. Many of these
ideas are being fueled by the computer revolution.
1.
Computer Education
Computers
have changed every other aspect of our lives more than they have changed the
way in which education happens in our schools.
And,
according to Intel CEO Craig Barrett, although ''over $40 billion dollars has
been spent in the United States on computer hardware for schools ... very
little has been invested to train teachers how to effectively use the
technology.'' Our educational system is steeped in conservatism, and innovative
approaches are not as well accepted here as in the business world.
But
what some are finding is that the interaction between humans and computers
could well be the beginning of rapid forms of accelerated learning that are
only in their infancy at this time.
2. The
Internet: A Virtual School
Although
this seems to be a subset of what is possible with computers, the Internet
affords an entire world of educational magic that is in the process of
transforming how we learn.
MIT
University announced in April 2001 that their entire university curriculum -
everything that MIT offers to its tuition-paying students - is now available on
the Internet free of charge!
When
asked if this were going to hurt them, MIT officials answered in what I feel is
an honorable manner. Teaching, they said, not money, is the purpose of an
educational institution. They pointed out that MIT also offered the first free
library to the world, and that people thought they were crazy then, for the
same reasons. MIT has suggested that all universities and colleges follow their
example and publish their curricula on the Internet, creating a vast,
incredible database for anyone who wants to learn.
At the
same time, Dell Computer recently put up over 100 million dollars to create an
Internet education system for the world where anyone, anywhere, has free access
to the information.
And in
its ''Teach to the Future'' program, Intel, with support from Microsoft
Corporation, will invest $100 million in cash, equipment, curriculum
development, and program management over the next three years to train more
than 400,000 classroom teachers in 20 countries around the world.
These
corporate and university giants are seeing something about our educational
future that we should perhaps become aware of: that the Internet may possibly
make obsolete the entire concept of physical schools, replacing them with the
''virtual school.''
Read
what PG News has to say about virtual schools at Distance Education Article.
Here we read about the extended use of the Internet and computer possibilities.
In its
simplest form, distance education, through video conferencing, makes it
possible for one teacher to speak in many different classrooms at once.
But the
virtual school is much more than simply a replacement for school buildings. It
will be open 24/7/365. And it will go beyond home schooling, for it can and
almost certainly will enter the realm of accelerated-learning techniques,
enabling languages and other complex subjects to be absorbed in months instead
of years. Which leads us to...
3. New
Learning Technologies
This is
the area in which I perceive the greatest possibility for truly revolutionary
change. Especially with the increased availability and sophistication of what
is now being called VLE, or "virtual learning environments,'' interactive
Internet programs could make obsolete our entire concept of ''schools.'' To
read about VLE, go here.
The
newest area of learning, beyond VLE, is called VLT, and this holds out even
greater possibilities. VLT consists of 3D virtual environments using
specialized frequencies that ''tune'' the brain to accept information, and
specialized programs that give direct, ''virtual'' experiences to the student.
VLT can create a ''virtual campus,'' similar to that offered by CALT - Center
for Advanced Learning Technologies - with its Virtual Worlds. The VLT
curriculum can use games, for example, as the basis of delivering material to
be learned, or even completely subliminal methods, or subliminal methods
superimposed over ordinary techniques.
These
areas of learning are new, but it seems obvious that VLT will become dominant
if teachers and students find that the success rate for learning is higher than
for other methods.
On the
far side of new learning technologies is the seemingly miraculous work of
people like Viasheslav Bronnikov in Russia/Ukraine. We have already published
an article about his work (see The Bronnikov Method: Teaching Blind Children to
See), and there's more in this issue at The Bronnikov Method: Creating Genius.
Bronnikov teaches people to read a book simply by picking it up in their hands.
It then appears on the ''inner screen'' of the mind, complete with
illustrations (for more about this, see my own article at Super Psychics and
the Inner TV Screen)!
Obviously,
if Bronnikov's work, and that of others like Sr. Guillermo Altamirano (Inge
Bardor's ''Memo'') and Russia's Boris Zolotov, can be brought into the
mainstream, then the future of learning will someday make a turn that is so
simple - not even needing computers - it will alter learning, and indeed our
entire concept of who we are, forever.
There's
a problem, though, and it is clearly stated by Harvard University professor
Chris Dede: ''Moving the minds and hearts is definitely the more complex
process than putting the infrastructure in place.'' Speed-reading, for example,
was actually introduced way back in the '60s. And, as Chris Dede's statement
predicts, even though it proved to be far more powerful and actually worked
better than anything that had come before, the conservative nature of
traditional education has kept this technique from even being considered for
use in our schools.
Now,
with the advent of the home computer, interactive learning programs such as VLE
and VLT, as they progress into maturity and cover more and more subjects, may
make everything else we have talked about irrelevant.
4. The
Need for Self-Esteem
One of
the greatest dangers in educating our children by traditional methods is that
so many of them are emotionally damaged or lose their self-esteem in the
process. Many young adults come out of our school system feeling - for whatever
reason - that they are not able or even worthy to reach for the stars.
No
matter what direction our educational system takes, the way in which it
disempowers our children has to become a primary focus of necessary change. And
many people, such as Jack Canfield and John and Nicole Clark (see Emotional
Intelligence: You Can Learn It), have long recognized this factor, and have
been working tirelessly in our schools - in the trenches, so to speak - to do
something about it. They, along with the Joseph Cornells, the Joanne Laucks,
and many others whose work we talk about in this magazine, are the new heroes
in this world.
Not
only the way in which we teach our children, and where we do it, but what we
are teaching them has begun to take center stage in the considerations of
educational change. And even though this area is of paramount importance, we
will say very little about it here, because it has been a warring ground from
the beginning of education itself.
I am
certain this war will never end, and perhaps rightfully so. Everyone has
diverse concepts as to what is important in life, and what we should teach our
children. The Spirit of Ma'at will not enter this endless debate, but with
Larry Weshon (see A Child's Right to Pursue Happiness) we can at least
question whether or not it is up to us to make this decision at all. And you
can, if you wish, post your own ideas to our new community message boards.
Education
is about all aspects of life and all peoples at all ages. Learning is an
essential expression of living. So you can use this web site, and others like
it, to express your opinions and understanding. In coming together we will find
the wisdom and synthesis which is the very purpose of learning.
Let's
test the proverb that says ''The pen is mightier than the sword.''