Education: Where are we now?

Everyone wants the “American Dream” right?  Two people in love have a baby they are excited about their new bundle of joy and the child’s future. The child enters primary school, then junior high, onto high school, onto a great college to get a degree and then they get a job and have their own family and the cycle starts over again.  What happens when your child doesn't fit into the mold of having good grades and being a model student, getting into the best college and doesn't meet the societal standard of a successful?  What if the teacher or the curriculum is not challenging your child and they appear like they are a problem or can’t focus.  Do we just label the child special needs or medicate them? What if the neighborhood in which the child lives in is poor so they don’t get the same opportunity as children in wealthy families?  What if the child is brilliant but can’t focus at school because of things that are going on at home?  Why have after school programs and arts and music been taken out of the schools system and communities where they are needed the most? Teachers are not being paid what they should be and no child left behind leave no room for teachers to be creative.  It’s pretty ironic “no child left behind” has left lots of children behind. Why are teachers not teachers to multiple learning styles.  Every child is different.

I guess what I am saying here is who created the model for American education and why hasn't it changed if it isn't working. Who established the American Dream and who said that our future is already written for us? Where is the creativity and the drive to follow one’s passion and explore the world and find your place to make the world a better place?  Or are we just supposed to be happy paying bills and living the “American Dream”?  Why is the focus on getting degrees when it is a proven fact that more people get degrees now and they have debt from school but no job? Does a college degree today still hold the same value as it did in the past?   The current education system is not set up for success and creative thinkers.  The question is what is our current education system set up for?  Why are the same people who make jails creating or running our school systems?  What exactly is going on? What can we do to change this?

Below I have l some very interesting documentaries and clips to stimulate conversation about this topic and get our minds moving on what can be done.  We will look at the issue and provide some creative solutions to this issue.

Malcom London - High School is a Training Ground 

College Conspiracy

Declining By Degrees

Ted Talks Education

To Educate a Woman is to Empower the World

Gender discrimination is not helping humanity it is hurting humanity.  In my opinion gender discrimination is what lead to slavery, but I digress. However, I do strongly affirm that to educate a woman is to empower the world at large. This is the true "Butterfly Effect"!  When we educate women, women move on to make very educated and caring decisions about their family and community.

Sheryl WuDunn and Nickolas Kristoff co authored a wonderful book and documentary called "Half the Sky -Turning oppression into opportunity"

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn on Why Women's Rights are the Key to the Future from Mountainfilm in Telluride on Vimeo.

The Mastery of Love - Don Ruiz

"A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship"

The most important relationship is with the person in the mirror...YOU. You can't begin to really love anyone else until you have a full understanding of who you are and  really accept yourself.

 I have spent many years learning and trying to share this information with women. when i put my hands on this book i was shouting so much as i was reading it tears started to flow. I promised myself I would share this book every chance i could.
 
The Mastery of Love is a great book/tool in self discovery and how to accept yourself and other people for who they are and how to use discernment when dealing with your relationships with friends, family and your love life.   

This video sums up the book beautifully.

 Below is the 2 part audio book "The Mastery of Love"

Democratic Socialist Womanism

Poet and activist Alice Walker reads her new poem, "Democratic Womanism," and discusses her thoughts on President Obama's legacy, including his use of drone strikes. "You ask me why I smile when you tell me you intend in the coming national elections to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils," reads Walker. "There are more than two evils out there, is one reason I smile."

 

Partnership vs Dominator Society Models

Riane Eisler describes how humankind once lived in a caring, sharing environment. That period, which lasted for tens of thousands of years, survived, though barely, just into historical times. It was characterized by a worship of the divine feminine as represented by the chalice in the title of Eisler's book.

In a blink of the eye, historically speaking, that environment was brutally overthrown and replaced with the beginnings of the patriarchy in which we live today. Those who overthrew this golden age worshipped not life and creativity, but death and destruction; in short, the blade. Those in power today continue to worship that blade, which has been changed by the rapid rise of technology into the lethal systems that could end all life on the planet in a matter of days or hours.

The premise of The Chalice and the Blade is that the rapid transition from a partnership society to a male dominator society was the result of the sociological equivalent of a "critical bifurcation point" in Chaos theory. Eisler explains in some detail how the currently popular scientific theory applies to that sudden shift into darkness that occurred approximately six or seven thousand years ago. However, she also goes on to propose that we once again face a critical bifurcation point; that we live in an exciting, dangerous time in which we can just as rapidly overthrow our hierarchically controlled patriarchal system and replace it with a technologically advanced model of the partnership system in which both genders work together to emphasize the nurturing side of life.

Download link: http://www.4shared.com/office/yaBF5Iaf/Chalice_And_The_Blade_Review.html

Lessons on Surrender

Your thoughts definitely create things if you put action behind the.  but "when you have worked as hard and done as much and strived and tried and given and plead and bargained and hoped - Surrender. When you have done all that you can do, and there is nothing left for you to do. Give it up. Give it up to that thing that is greater than yourself and let it then become a part of the flow" ~Oprah Winfrey
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The World of the Goddess - Marija Gimbutas

An absorbing view of the culture, religious beliefs, symbolism and mythology of the prehistoric, pre-patriarchal cultures of Old Europe, who revered and celebrated the Great Goddess of Life, Death, and Regeneration in all her many forms, of plants, of stone, of animals and humans, by the scholar who has made the exploration of these cultures her life work.... The program is produced by William Free, producer of the acclaimed television series with Joseph Campbell, "Transformations of Myth through Time."

On Gimbutas:

Marija Gimbutas was a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe", a term she introduced. Her works published between 1946 and 1971 introduced new views by combining traditional spadework with linguistics and mythological interpretation.