Nobody, I’m sure, is living a perfect life. I’m not. But I’m working all the time on improving my life a lot and I think that’s something we should all be doing. It’s NEVER too late to improve things!
I read a marvelous story of a guy who graduated Oxford University at the age of 91! Bertie Gladwin left school aged 14 with no interest in academia. He’d been put in the duffers class by teachers and promptly lost interest in schooling (what does that tell you about teachers, eh?)
Today he has a total of three degrees and is even considering doing a PhD (what does that tell you about Bertie Gladwin?) I would argue he actually had far more ability than any of his teachers!
If you didn’t know it already, here are some remarkable people who were abject school failures: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Sir Winston Churchill. None of them graduated college and yet each left a considerable mark on the world.
What that tells me is that a typical school education—teachers—actually destroy ability, instead of nurturing it.
But I’m really talking about living to the max, rather than worldly success. Most of us, if shown a path to critical acclaim or power, would choose something closer to our heart anyway. It’s simply that, with those individuals in particular, what they were really passionate about was computers, records (Virgin Records) and the British Empire.
Human Life
It’s a quirk of nature that humans get to even think about such things, never mind worry about them! All the way up the evolutionary tree, creatures are concentrating on pure survival. Staying alive is a 24/7 job. Very few animals get to relax, not even elephants and the big cats. Whales remain a bit mysterious in that respect.
All of a sudden, a creature at the top of the evolutionary tree learns language, gets to talk and write, and can study and learn from the past experience of others. It’s quite a remarkable shift, if you think about it. Once in place, it only took a cumulative few thousand years to outstrip all the rest of creation.
Bang!
Fear Of Change
All we have to do to succeed better in life is to change things in an upward direction. It’s easy! Or should be…
Yet people resist change like it was a terminal disease. Those of us who like to embrace change and ride its bow wave are few and far between. Most people I encounter continue on the same path, even though it is manifestly not the optimum one.
Has it ever struck you as strange that people more easily give up on their life dreams than make the necessary changes to attain them? It’s the weirdest thing—but you see what I am saying? People will embrace the pain of failure, rather than embrace the pain of change.
Even more strange when you recognize that change is inevitable anyway… It comes at you, whether you resist it or not. It’s an old old joke that the only thing which is constant is change! Heraclitus spelled it out a different way: you cannot step into the same river twice.
Yes, the riverbed is there still but the water you were wetted by the first time is long gone downstream; this is new water around your ankles now.
What Is Your Dream?
Do you even know what your life’s dream is? I actually use the term purpose in my writings: What is your main purpose in being you? Most people don’t know. It’s arguable that everyone is supposed to have a purpose. I don’t believe that but many teachers do (or say they do).
But there is no harm in attaching yourself to a worthwhile and fulfilling purpose of someone else. I think it’s a false premise that everyone is supposed to dream up their own unique idea.
As someone who has never lacked a purpose, I don’t quite get why some people don’t have one. I’ve always wanted to change the world. I made a start in the 1960s, as most of us Boomers did. It’s true to say the world was more altered by what happened in the 1960s than any other 10-year period in history.
After that I wanted to change the face of medicine and did! By the start of the new millennium almost all the ideas I cherished in healing had become adopted, at least by forward thinking doctors. And those of you who have been with me a while know I often joke about “I told ‘em!” when some new “breakthrough” points in the direction I’ve been travelling for 20 – 30 – 40 years,
Now I am launching my ultimate mission, in my 7th decade, and lovin’ it! My aim is nothing less than the purposeful re-invention of Mankind. My vehicle is a self-designed super-powered rocket I call Supernoetics™. This week it all takes off.
What Can It Do For You?
Don’t be shy. Come take a look! I made a promise to Higher Power that I would give everything away free. You can have all the knowledge you like, for the generous sum of absolutely no money whatsoever!
I will be charging for books and courses, if you want them. But you don’t have to pay! Just work through my blogs, wisdom bites, articles, videos and audios and see if you can see what I see… people behaving better. People living richer lives.
There is a career, as a professional coach, for those of you who like that sort of idea. Just let me know.
I am trying very hard to keep a positive, open mind about your thoughts but your words are road blocks for me.
‘What that tells me is that a typical school education -TEACHERS- actually DESTROY ability instead of nurturing it.’
YOU personally have an example of a student who was unfairly ‘grouped’ but you turn around and do the same to all teachers (of whom, you would like to consider yourself one…just not within a ‘typical’ school.) We all have
limited time…I am wondering if I should read more.
Maybe you should watch Sir Kenneth Robinson’s talks on TED
Gwyneth. The fact remains that, no matter how indignant you want to
effect to be, the educational system is a disaster and destroying all
the best of children. 99.99% of pupils do not wish to be professors at
college, yet that is the track they are thrust on. You should also look
at “Schooling The World”, a deeply disturbing look at the way that Western
“education” is trashing so much of our globe.
The original movie seems to have been taken down. But someone has posted it
on YouTube, starting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLSIgZWNR9M
If man by his nature is a sinful man (according to our religions), you have a big order to make Supernoetics become our new basics for our survival!
Not really Josephf
Almost anything slightly intelligent will do better than current world religions,
almost all of which were written down about 2,000 years ago by men who had never
seen a smart phone, a computer, aircraft, space travel or antibiotics. Their fairy
story interpretations of “reality” have no relevance to what we face today.
BTW Man is not by nature sinful. That’s religious hooey to trap you. How can something
created “in the image of God” be sinful? Nah, don’t buy it…
Perhaps I can help clear up a road block or two for you Gwenyth.
I was an aspiring concert classical guitarist in my youth until I read an interview by a well-respected, music educator who said, “If a left-handed person played guitar right-handed, he can never achieve the proficiency of a right-handed person.”
And there I was a left-handed person playing guitar right-handed with a fair degree of proficiency, and so it was too late in my career to start from scratch.
And so, when I experienced slow growth or stagnation in my technical development as a guitarist, it sort of confirmed the truth in that expert’s statement.
I believed he was right!
The end result was I moved away from my dream and took up other pursuits.
Years later, I returned to my instrument only to find that with the right approach to practice and by leaving my mind open to possibility, I was able to achieve virtuosic technical capabilities, far beyond my wildest dreams.
Now I realize his pseudo-authoritative statement was utter rubbish, But as a youngster embarking on a dream, I trusted his words, thinking he was the expert and must be right.
I think what Prof. Keith is saying is that traditional education is dis-empowering while what he’s talking about is empowering. And therein lies the difference.
At least that’s my take on it.
Had that professor be empowering, my life would have taken a totally different turn.
Please don’t get turned off by what he’s saying…please stay open to possibility.
Respectfully,
Dear half-Scot, Seeing I’m a teacher /translator by default, having had to backtrack on my plans and return to Scotland from America and bring up a child on my own, let me just correct you a wee bit on this idea that it’s the teachers who are at fault.
It depends on the education system. I spent my life so far rebelling against any idiocy in education I came across e.g. where teachers must write reports on pupils. I let my pupils write reports on me and paid attention to what they said. I never told them what to think. Rather taught them as a priority, to read only original material and not hearsay etc etc. and always to ask “why?” I foretold several super-careers where all other teachers had pronounced these pupils dead in the water at 12!!!!
As an example of how children turn out when they are sent away from home at a very young age into a cold, bullying system where they are taught to believe they are the ruling class etc etc, the whole English parliamentary and electoral system will suffice. I’m sure you are hurting the feelings of many potential “listeners” when you lump them all together in this way. Scotland and Finland weed out all those hopefuls who are not psychologically right. Before that they have been thinned out on an academic basis. Only 1 out of 10 is admitted to trainng.
They are taught how to teach and not lecture. They are thrown in to the classroom from the first term onwards, at the mercy of kids who love to watch them succeeding or failing. They are criticised by lecturers who never miss a chance to mention the degree of failure, till after 4 years, you have modulated your voice and accent because it’s your responsabitity to communicate. Now you are a one- man- show, functioning from the bloody playing field to the drawing class, writing new material for groups or even individuals for the next day’s main subjects, after analysing how well each child had understood a and to bring out the best in each child everywhere, always.
Cut to Germany of the present. My son survived a terrible indoctrination and testing-type of further “education” and is now himself suffering watching helplessly as his bright children are being forced into the same old mould, in this system, unchanged since the Nazis. The departing Allies told them to re-think this and all other systems, but they did nothing except talk about it. Students never even have an interview re. suitability for teaching. The Minister of Education had a fake Doctorate as had countless others, and had to give up her post.
The students do more years of the same and are then let loose on children, without ever having stood in front of a class. Shown on TV recently, they are seen trying to maintain discipline as they talk AT kids who are busy styling hair or talking on mobiles during the lesson. Neither the teachers nor the schools are ever inspected! These is no question of the fact that the children are to blame for bad marks, no responsibility is taken for not having taught!
Please tweak your text. I know what you mean, and agree basically about education in general, but not all teachers are bad.
Guess who is overall head of design at a very top of the market German car manufacturer, and how much other British creative education is having a huge influence there. Not anyone who had to regurgitate boring texts !
from a whole Scot.
Wow, Elizabeth, what a diatribe. I’m also a half Scot – my Dad came from Dumfries and my Mum from Silloth. I went through the education system in the UK in the 60’s. I think I had a really advantaged education. Went to the local Grammar school and left with enough qualifications to get me into college to study computer science, which stood me in good stead, career wise. I ended up running my own software company and that allowed me to retire early, thank goodness. I have to say, however, that despite all good intent, most of my teachers were as dull as ditch water and completely unable to relate the theory we were learning to real life practicalities. I imagine this was largely owning to having to process as many pupils through the mould in order to meet the required statistics. There are still those teachers that break the mould, though; they make sense of the acedimic world and bring into sharp relief how the theory melds into real life. My first chemistry teacher translated from text book to real life when he demonstrated to a bunch of disinterested teenage girls, how soap, lipstick and handcream are manufactured. There are ways of breaking through – with a little imagination!