We face an unprecedented crisis. A social crisis, and an ecological crisis. I believe that they’re linked, and that if we are to find solutions to those interrelated crises, those solutions will only come out of education – and it has to be education of a particular type.

I would suggest that traditional education is not really education at all. What passes for education in our public schools and in most of our private schools, certainly in our universities and colleges today, is in fact a sort of training. It has very little to do with allowing for the unfolding of potential within the individual, which I see as the basis for real education. It is, rather, an attempt to create and to reproduce the structures of hierarchy and domination that are shown in the larger culture. It is an attempt to train willing young minds to meet the needs of capitalism and industry by producing students who can unquestioningly go out and join the work force and become so-called “productive” members of society.

I feel that given the direction in which society is moving today, the ecological crisis and the social crisis, the last thing we need to do is reproduce that system.

We need instead to generate forms of education that help to transform that system, change its basic structures in ways that can address these problems. We have to understand that traditional education operates on three levels, and that those three levels reinforce each other. First there is the form of traditional education, which of course is intended to instill students with obedience to authority. They’re taught to sit in orderly rows in classrooms, they’re taught to respond to bells and whistles, they’re taught to never question the authority of the teacher. The teacher’s primary role in education is maintaining order in the classroom. It has very little to do with learning at all. Actually, that attempt to reproduce order, to create order, to create obedience to authority, to create compliant students who become willing workers is extremely destructive. It’s related to the second level of traditional education, which has to do with the content – what students are actually being taught. Undeniably it’s useful for young people to learn how to read and how to write, how to do basic mathematical calculations. These are all things that will serve them well. But beyond that, there is a hidden curriculum, which is really an attempt to create in these students an unquestioning acceptance of our current culture and its having a devastating effect.

I can tell you, as a student, about the impact of our education system, both the structure and the content. It’s been very detrimental to me, as it has been for generations of children and it’s through the reproduction of hierarchy, through the acceptance of authority that our society protects it’s own survival. And it’s not something that’s going to change. I’ve been sharing my ideas about education for a couple of years at various events and I can tell you that within professional education today there is not a great deal of understanding around these ideas. Though there is wave after wave of reform, those reforms are largely driven by the needs of industry.

This brings us to the third level of traditional education, and that is the individuality with which children are educated today. Its about the individual students and their needs and their well being and the unfolding of their particular potential. But currently it’s a ‘one size fits all’ model of education, which is intended to reinforce the agenda of obedience.

So what is the alternative? If we accept the idea that meaningful social change will only come about through a process of education, which is of course one of the underlying beliefs of anarchism, then we need to look very carefully at what constitutes a radical education. What would be an education that’s adequate to bring about the kind of social change necessary to stop this destruction? What would constitute a radical education? I would suggest that the same categories that we use in understanding traditional education have to be applied in our understanding of radical education. For an education to be truly radical we need to examine the form that that education takes. We need to examine the content of that education. What it is that is being taught. And we have to understand the indvidual needs of students.

There is not a single solution or a single model that would constitute a radical education. As we know from looking at people who have examined childhood development, early childhood development, and adolescent development, there are various developmental stages at which particular kinds of education are appropriate.

Certainly at the level of primary education I would suggest that the primary developmental need of students is the type of free development.

As Jerry Mintz has pointed out in his work,
“there are oases around the world, there is a free-school here or a free-school there. But in general these noble experiments are isolated and the number of children that they reach is extremely limited. And that’s very unfortunate, because at this formative stage in children’s development the most valuable thing that we can offer them is freedom to explore, and resources they can use in that exploration. But this is not something that figures largely in the scheme of traditional education at all.”

As we progress we can begin to also look at ways in which the content of the education becomes important. At secondary school I was taught about how britain ruled the world, but very little is taught about the oppresion and slaughter of the natives of those countries. We have to ensure that our students are exposed to a history that reflects a critical views and the development that we assume to be inevitable. Students need to know the history of movements like anarchism. Students need to be exposed to the lives of people like Emma Goldman, and this is not a part of a standard curriculum in any secondary school that I know of today.

This question of content is closely linked to the form of the education. And if we are truly to create students who are able to think critically, draw their own conclusions and then contribute to a larger project of social change, it will only happen if they are given an adequate grounding in this kind of history, if they’re given the tools that they need to be able to critique the contemporary economic system. In this Biodiversity Hall, for example, at the Museum of Natural History, there was a little mention made of over-consumption. That was really put on the individual – we are all greedy consumers and that is why we have an environmental crisis. It’s because each one of us consumes too much. It’s because the world is becoming overpopulated. But there was no mention of the fact that the world today contains 500 billionaires, and that those billionaires have an annual income equal to the poorest 45% of the world’s population. That’s quite an omission, and it suggests an analysis that is inadequate, that does not prepare young people, or anyone for that matter, to make sense out of the mess that we’re in today. In fact, it mystifies it and ensures the continuation of the system in which the elite benefit from the continuation of that system. And that’s very much the intentionality of modern traditional education.

We need to develop educational processes and curriculums that encourage freedom, that encourage unfettered development, and that give students exposure to the ideas, the concepts, and the critical understanding that will allow them to begin to deconstruct the myths supporting the current system, if we are ever to deconstruct that system and replace it with something positive and life-affirming.

That brings me to the final level on which I think a radical education has to operate. And that is intentionality. We have to be very intentional about what we are doing. I’m not suggesting here that we have to be dogmatic or ideological, that we have to limit expression or limit inquiry. Rather, we have to ensure that students are allowed to explore these subversive and radical ideas, that they’re given access to the resources they need to sort things out, and that they come away with an understanding that they can make sense out of a system that thrives on the fact that it’s incomprehensible! And there are ways to make sense out of it. If we fail to provide our students, our young people today, and ourselves for that matter, with this kind of outlook, with the ability to think critically and to think independently, to question authority and to view themselves not as passive consumers but as active agents of social change, then we’ll be making a tremendous mistake. We will be condemning the world to simply reproducing, in ever-deepening levels of degradation, the system that exists today. And I think that is our task. It’s not a simple task, it’s not an easy task, but it’s a vitally important task.

In closing I would simply ask that you keep the faith. That we continue to spread these ideas, that we recognise that social change will only come about through a process of education, that education is not limited to the classroom or to institutions of higher education, and that each of us, as an individual, has a responsibility.

The general consensus among ‘experts’ seems to be that the state of youth is just not as robust as it used to be. We are told that young people nowadays are less moral and less dynamic than their parents or grandparents were. Young people, it seems, just don’t give a damn.

But who says this, exactly? Dare we guess that those who are so disdainful of today’s teenagers have only a passing acquaintance with the memory of their own youth? The youth of yesteryear might have all the answers but I suggests that those answers could be wrong for one reason and one reason only: The youth of yesteryear forget.

They forget how they themselves blundered through the minefield of adolescence. They forget the late night returns to face the wrath of their parents: “What time do you call this? We were worried sick.” They forget the foul-mouthed tirades against their family who just ‘don’t understand’. They forget the fags and booze, and joints smoked. They forget just what an ugly and painful yet fabulously irresponsible time it was being young. They forget because they grow up. We all do….unfortunately.

Human nature never changes. Youth never changes. Young people nowadays are no different, no better nor worse, than they were in any idealized past that we imagine. The boy to man is still the same as it ever was: The unpredictable and uncontrolled emotions, the sense of injustice at every turn and, above all, the raging pool of hormones we all wallow in.

You make the mistake of judging young people by the standards of the societies we live. That standard is set in stone wherever you go in the world. The youth of any country is just that: Youth. It has no nationality.

Yet perhaps there is one difference present modern societies that is fundamentally different from the past: The state is taking over the business of raising children. It feels compelled to do so because, like the individual parent, it is being scared out of its wits by the media.

The dangers are all around us, yet we all worry ourselves sick about potential dangers facing young people. But we can’t help it, and so you ‘responsible adults’ quietly lose your minds.

Hysteria is a curious thing. Young people are prone to it but so are older people. What is it that young people do nowadays that so outrages you? Could it not be that young people are simply adapting to a society that adults have created?

“I blame society” is often the first of choice among the unthinking. Yes, and that society is the society that you created in your own image. You introduce us teenagers into it then you spend all your time blaming us for behaving in a fashion that you yourselves encourage. You can’t escape the blame by saying you don’t hold with modern ways. We all watch TV; We ‘consume’ and we jump when the media says, “JUMP.”
You think that teenagers who have sex are promiscuous, but are we not doing just what YOU did at our age? Many of you smoked weed and got drunk and declared to the world (and your parents) that you didn’t give a damn. You did all that when you were sixteen. You did it in the past, teenagers do it now and teenagers will continue to do it in the future.

Is it healthy for us to do all this? Probably not . But perhaps we are doing it because that is what we have to do in order to grow up. We should never be impressed by ‘moral’ and virtuous youngsters that come perfectly formed out of the box. Such perfect teens are not being honest with themselves. There will inevitably come a time when young people have to make that little rebellion and declare their individuality. They have to do so and it’s better to do so at sixteen rather than thirty.

Our modern society is not that bad. Where would we rather be? In those morally upright times when people were lynched or wiped out by plague? Or perhaps these modern time is closer to Utopia than we might think. To paraphrase Winston Churchill: Modern society is not perfect, but it is the best non-perfect society we have known or ever will know.

Perhaps perfection WILL conquer society in the future, but until then, let’s be thankful for small mercies AND teenagers.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

-Philip Larkin – This Be The Verse

Nowadays, many children focus on formal education because they think that if they have a Diploma, they have many opportunities. But the things are not quite so. After their graduation, they are looking for a workplace and don’t find anything in the field they studied. Basic education is very important, I admit. Non-formal education is different from formal education, from the issues of content and forms of realization. Non-formal education is characterized by:

•Actual responsibility to set requirements
•Allows moments of abstraction, by extracting knowledge from practical life
•Out of education, teaching function, giving way learning function.
Functions of non-formal education activities are crucial in the process of lifelong learning. Besides developing skills which are specific to certain areas of activity students develop their functional skills: organizational capabilities, time management, critical thinking, decision-making. Students are able to create and develop a competitive spirit based on their real skills and abilities.

Personal development plays a crucial role in human life. State education doesn’t put great emphasis on personal development. People’s thirst for personal growth pushes them to give up traditional education. If you find your purpose in life, building your big dreams with traditional education it’s brilliant.

Traditional education teaches you how to be an employee. I am convinced that there isn’t an ideal job to satisfy your inner desires. Therefore, I am looking for other ways to live my dreams, not through traditional education. I find my path and it works like a charm and the best part is it does not require any effort. It is effortless. You got to use it to believe it. Ask me for more information if you are interested. You have the greatest opportunity to add bright colours to your life. Fired Up and Focused!

Below is part one of a 16 part (that’s right, 16 tortuous parts!) series of videos posted on youtube where Kent Hovind attempts to explain how crystal clear it is that dinosaurs and man once coexisted.

Apparently we have no way of knowing that no man walked whilst dinosaur’s where around. But he can tell us, in great detail how Noah fitted all the animals on the arc

How flawed is this guys logic?

His flatly stated conclusions, i.e. “…there’s no way anybody could know (that man has never seen a dinosaur) unless they’ve talked to everybody that ever lived…” and his smug, self-assured delivery are so comical , that there’s really little else I can say to top it off, so I’ll just let it speak for itself. But did you notice how he referred to National Geographic as “National Pornographic,” then corrected himself? That was supposed to be a joke… one of many “zingers” that would pepper the rest of his uh, er… um…  ”lecture.”

Earlier I mentioned that Kent Hovind was one of my favorite creationists, but it’s not for the reason you might suspect (his unintentional comedy  like the video clip above). No, it’s because of an appearance he made on the Ali G Show a few years ago. Hovind was part of a roundtable discussion on science, hosted by Ali G, that is not only one of the funniest episodes of the show I’ve ever seen, but when Ali G accuses Hovind of leaving a “floater” in the backstage studio restroom, well… you just need to watch it…

You have 10 minutes to get some one to send you a text from outside this school. Find out, what the weathers like, what they had for breakfast and where they are. Bonus points if the person is in a different country. Using a language other than English.

Talk about gathering information. Think about the many way that this could be used to graph data. Predicting economic trends. Food economics! Only 28% of A-level students believe that education is meaningful. Lets make education relevant. 21% Believe that their course is interesting and only 39% of students believe that their education with help in anyway with their future career. How might the quarter of young people who drop out of school feel if they were allowed to use their ipods in class.  Ipods allow you to download podcast’s- which allow you to learn ANY TIME of  day. There are pod casts out there for every subject going.

If you cant beat them, join them.

If your not using technology to teach, then you should be. I’d like you to look up two words in the dictionary (an online dictionary obviously) To Teach (v):

1) Show or explain how to do something 2)Encourage someone to except something as fact 3)Give information about or instruction in

To Educate (v):

1)An experianced and trusted advisor
2)Someone who gives moral and intellectual guidance
3)A person who advises and shows the way

Do you teach or do you EDUCATE?

- Albert Einstein

Allowing young people to act as individuals is the root of progress, this individuality can be gained through giving young people a proper education. The importance of a good education is quite obvious to everyone, we can find this out just by looking back through history.

“If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.”

- Plato

An important part of all education currently is the examination. Exams should be a way of checking the ‘Calibre’ of students, their talents, and determined where they stand within the academic system. But our examinations are purely mark based. This tunnelled view can determine the rest of a student’s life.

Students are made literate, but not educated. Students become passive thinkers and can only relay what they have been taught, and have no passion, drive, or knowledge to question the only thing they know: how to listen.

The current examination system only test the memorizing capacity of a student. The system doesn’t allow for the development of creativity.

As exam time approaches you will see students cramming and forcing formulas, theories, definitions and so on into their brains. Students spend weeks trying to learn their study material. Because if a student come up with a new, creative idea then the teacher can’t bear to think of something in a different way. They want their students to copy out the paragraph from the text-book, word for word, full stop for full stop, and comma for comma. Even if the student might not know any of the logic behind the answer to the question, or even what the question means. But they know when they see a certain word in the question that they need to copy out a certain paragraph from the text-book.

The entire examination system is based on memorization. Not learning.

It is totally unfair to expect students to be able to fit an entire years worth of learning into just a couple of hours at the end of the year.  Of what worth to the student is memorizing the entire text-book when just days after the exam they would have forgotten it all. How can this possibly test the potential of a student.

Student are under tremendous pressure due to they being overburdened by school or college. Students panic at the thought of any test or examination. The education system is creating problems and fear with in these young peoples lives- prompting students to be driven to cheat, or even harm themselves.  When the pressure builds and get out of control, it leads to frustrations and nervous breakdowns. The students feel unheard, and as if nobody understands their problem.

Around exam times last year there was a 30% increase in students who visited doctors. Can this really being doing any good to young people?

Conventional annual examinations must be dropped. Internal exams could be held on weekly basis and the students could be rated on the basis of their overall performance. Internal assessment should be an important component as well as other extracurricular activities, group discussions, case studies, oral presentations, seminars should be introduced. These activities ought to carry some marks for the purpose for evaluation. Learning has to be made enjoyable and an enriching experience. Things should be made simpler and interesting for the students, even if it involves hard work. Parental pressure should be reduced. They should not learn for the exams but for acquiring knowledge and enriching their minds.

Facebook campaign over ‘unfair’ exam http://bit.ly/aMtIkY

If you really want to listen to youth voice? Then start by looking inside yourself. Before you go listening to youth voice, ask yourself these questions, Who am I? Where did I come from? What do I stand for? What do I stand against?

Then look at the young people around you. Where are they from? What do they stand for? What do they stand against? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, then go ask those young people – and ask sincerely, and ask honestly. If young people know what they believe, then they will tell you. If they don’t know, then you can support them by facilitating opportunities for them to discover. But don’t make up your mind beforehand – that’s the important part.

Is That All It Takes?
There is no such thing as one single Youth Voice. The voices of young people are infinite, like stars, each shining in a different way. Young people come from a lot of different communities, different cultures, and different heritage. It is the responsibility of adult to hear their voices.

When youth voice is engaged in communities, schools, and organizations, young people grow more capable, effective, and powerful than we have ever imagined. They enhance their academic skills with “real world” experience, learn leadership and citizenship skills and the importance of helping and working with others.
Just as important, adults grow more energized, creative, and insightful. Their work becomes more responsive, and their hearts become more engaged. Sharing responsibility of community building lifts the weight of working alone.
In our communities, young people are viewed as problem makers rather than problem solvers. When young people help make decisions, design their own programs, then we are more likely to meet their needs. And when young people are part of the process they feel ownership, encourage others and become powerful role models. Most importantly, youth empowerment unites people to work for improved communities and schools.

In communities, schools, small towns, cities and in countries around the world, youth empowered young people are changing society, economies, the environment, and more. Various youth empowerment programs world-wide are engaging with young people as, Community planners, School teachers, Program evaluators, Neighborhood activists, Government officials, Non-profit directors, Workshop trainers, News reporters, Action researchers and so much more.

You want to make your school, community, business, charity or what ever else, to run more smoothly….GET YOUNG PEOPLE ON BOARD!

I’ve always had an interest in education, in particular the way in which it is structured and run, and since a young age always wondered ’WHY?’. But I think everyone has something to say about education. It has had an effect on everyone, people always want to tell you SOMETHING about their education.

If you ask somebody about their education something comes up from inside of them.  Its something everybody can take an interest in. We all have a vested interest in education. Education is meant to take us into a future that we can never grasp.

It is thought provoking that, people who started school this year won’t retire until 2070. Yet nobody has a clue what the world will look like in 5 years time. In recent months I’ve been to conferences where people have been discussing the future, the future of technology, and the future of education. But none of these people can tell you anything that will happen beyond 5 years. Then how can we possibly be educated for it. To me, someone who is hoping to become an education professional, the unpredictability of education is extraordinary.

This is why we have to recognise the phenomenal creativity and innovation of children and young people. You can take a look at any child and you will be able to identify their amazing talent.

It might not be amazing when you look at the entirety of childhood, but what is amazing is that that child has put in the dedication to develop their skill into a talent.

My opinion is that ALL children and young people have an amazing talent, that through our education system we squander this talent, sometimes ruthlessly. My argument is that creativity has been left behind in an ever changing world. I believe that creativity is as important as numeracy and literacy, and that it  should be treated with the same status.

There are great examples  of where kids don’t know…… but have a go. (I could write speeches for Gordon Brown with rhyming like that).

I’m not saying that being wrong is creative, but i do know that if your not prepared to be wrong then you will never come up with anything original or creative.

The issue is that by the time people become older, we become frightened of being wrong.

The national curriculum shows that mistakes are the worse things you can make. This means that we are educating people out of their creative capacity.

“All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up”

-Picaso

I believe we don’t grow into creativity, we do the opposite, we grow out of creativity. Not willingly or knowingly,  but we get educated out of it.

Where ever you go in the world, all educational system has the same hierarchy.

Maths & science——————>Humanities——————>The Arts

I always spent most of my school time at the bottom of this scale in the arts department, and I noticed another hierarchy there: Drama and dance are not as important as music and art.

There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance to students every day the same way we teach maths.

WHY?

I think maths is a very important subject, but I also think drama and dance are equally important.

If you were to look at the education system from the outside, as an alien, you would have to conclude, from looking at the output, that the purpose of the system is to produce university professors. These are the people who come out of the top of the educational system, and with all respect to university professors, they are put on a pedestal and recognised as the ‘greatest’, but why?

Firstly, our education system leans upon the idea of academic ability, and there’s good reason for this.  Maths, English, Science were the subjects we are told were the ‘good’ subjects.  The creative subjects, the ones you enjoyed, the ones you where unknowingly pushed away from, on the grounds that, “you’ll never get a job doing that”. Am I right?

“ Don’t do music you can’t be a musician.”

“Don’t do art, you’ll never become an artist.”

Now, quite obviously, this view is out dated. The planet is engulfed in a revolution.

The other reason that creativity is suppressed, is that academic achievement has tainted our views on intelligence.  The whole education system is back tracked from university graduates.  Then you end up with a lot of highly talented, creative, brilliant people, thinking that they’re not. Because the thing that they are good at, at school wasn’t recognised or some times stigmatized.

In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO, more people will graduate from university, world wide, than the total number of graduates….EVER. And this is because of things such as technology, the transition into work and the huge explosion of population.

Then suddenly a degree isn’t worth anything.  Forty years ago if you had a degree you had a job. If you didn’t have a job it was because you didn’t want one. But now young people with degrees are heading back home to live with Mam and Dad, because  all of a sudden you now need a Ph.D.

We need to rethink the way it works, we need to rethink the way intelligence works. We know three things about intelligence and the way it works:

Firstly- diversity, we think about the world in all different ways. Through sight, sound,  movement.
Secondly intelligence is dynamic. Creativity, which I believe is the production of  valuable original ideas,  lets us think about situations in different ways we will have a creative idea. The third thing, intelligence is, is that it is distinct. From person to person it is all different, and if we stop looking at situations with tunnel vision then we will approach things with a different, alternative, creative and enriching perception.

What we have to celebrate is the gift of the human imagination. We should be recognising and cherishing this gift wisely, to stop creativity being destroyed.

The way we can do this is by seeing our creativity and imagination for what it is worth, and to see children’s imaginations for what they are. Our job is to nurture this creativity for the future. A future we may not see, but they will, and what we have to do is help them make something of it.

Shine Week 2010, celebrating all young people’s talents.