Change Is Essential, Without It We Deny Evolution!

I think we can all agree that it's definitely time for change. Now I know that there are many aspects of our lives and of this world that definitely need change, but the change I'm referring to is the essential one regarding our communities, our society, our education system, and most importantly the way we are raising our kids. That's correct, I said it, our kids. If they live in our world or our community, then we need to start looking at them as our children.

I think it's high time we recognize how desperately we need a major overhaul of our public school system for starters. The public school system needs a makeover, and badly!  Especially when we begin talking about grade-school, by which I am referring to kindergarten up until grade 6, we need to literally transform the way that these children are being taught. We need to put the emphasis on the right things and I think we're all getting to the point, and the level of consciousness, where we understand what is important and what is not important.  Specifically for kids between the ages of 4-5 years old, up until 11 or 12, do not need to be inundated with the majority of what they are being taught. Although math, science, history, geography, etc are always essential and will be tools that these children need, we also need to be more realistic and what they really need is to learn how to get along with each other, how to communicate properly, how to take care of their body and minds, how to eat properly, how to properly deal with emotions and confrontations, and I think we can all agree that being able to find Afghanistan on a world map or remember the date of the Spanish Revolution, is not nearly as important as the rest of what I've mentioned.

We need to continue to teach these children as they grow to adolescents and teenagers, and if fact we need to teach them for as long as they are in school how to deal with their emotions, how to understand and diffuse anger in themselves and others, how to understand frustration and loss. We should have a course that teaches our youth how to make the most out of every situation. I think that our young children in public school should have a home economics course again and teach kids how to bake, cook, sew, and essentially how to run a household. Maybe its time to start teaching our youth how to change the oil in your car, how to rotate and change tires, how to do the the simple and basic things that can save you hundreds if not a few thousand dollars a year in service because you can do that yourself. I know for myself that being an adult who cannot do those types of fairly simple things for my own car bothers me. I wish I learned about my car and how to protect that investment a hell of a lot more than what I learned in Science class. We need to start teaching these kids how much money the cost of living is and how they can start to prepare for their futures. We need to teach these kids the importance of family and how you better have a very clear idea of when and why you are bringing children of your own into this world.

Most importantly I think it's time that more people from our communities start to stand up and be honest with our kids. It's on us as adults to stand up and say, "hey wait a second you know what, a lot of what I learned in school was a big waste of time, a lot of what I learned in school has no bearing or effect on my adult life whatsoever"! I think that if adults took the time to really think about what it is that makes us successful as adults, we would clearly see and understand what our children so desperately need.

We were taught while growing up that if somebody else can't do the job who do we turn to? Do we look to someone else or do we look at ourselves? We look at ourselves and if nobody else wants to do the job then we do it! We need to take that mentality and we need to  expand on it a little bit more. We need to understand that also includes our community and our society. I am well aware of how overwhelming it is just dealing with yourself and your own family, but we need to do more. What if there's a kid in your neighborhood and you see him struggling and you know the parents are struggling why aren't you doing something about it? Why are you sitting around waiting for a time bomb to slowly tick down and then explode does that make sense to anybody out there?

Does it make any sense to sit and watch a train wreck about to happen and tell yourself I'm not going to do anything about it because how could I possibly stop a train wreck? Well you're right, you can't stop it, but does that mean you should just sit there and watch, or do you think you should start running up and down the railroad tracks screaming to alert the people of what you've seen? Maybe try to convince someone to jump off to their safety? Maybe get the conductor to throw on his breaks 100 meters earlier then originally planned?

Hopefully the point I'm trying to make is kind of clear but just when we think there's nothing we can do there's always something we can do. To take a golf analogy, you will miss 100% of your putts that don't make it to the hole. In other words you can't expect to be successful if you refuse to try! 

I remember being taught as a child and maybe this is a lesson that needs to be re-taught, when I walked by some garbage on the street, and my father or mother I don't recall who, asked me to pick it up. I remember saying that I didn't throw it there, so why should I pick it up? That's when they explained, it's not about who threw it there, it's about you live in this area so you should want to pick it up. Okay so I picked it up and then I came up with the next logical response. How in the world will it make a difference if I pick it up, this world is so big and there's so many people so what does it matter if I pick up one piece while hundreds of people throw another piece? I hope we all know what my father's response was, and if we don't there lies half the problem, but he responded with, "it doesn't matter what other people do, you do what you do because that's who you are, if you see garbage on the ground you pick it up because you know it doesn't belong. Maybe just maybe a few others will see what you did and it will encourage them to do the same or something similar!"

The point is you never know what can happen when you try, but one thing that you can guarantee yourself 100% of the time, is that inaction will definitely get you absolutely nowhere. Sitting there and thinking about doing something will get you know where! Let's just do some things differently, let's just take some chances, let's take some risks and let's try to go against the grain and do things a little differently. I think it's time that we recognize that this world has majorly changed over the last hundred years and how archaic is our school system? it is archaic, let's call a spade a spade, we need to have change, we need to stop sitting around waiting for the government, waiting for our neighbour, and waiting for our educators to do something about it. We need to get up in our own neighbourhood, maybe go door-to-door, maybe call all the local parents you know and rally some troops! Success, strength, focus and commitment are all contagious, and trust me when the fuel for all these emotions is protecting/helping children, who in the world doesn't want to help with that?

Maybe if we taught our children how to love properly and how to take care of their communities we would have a much better society, I don't know, but it sounds like a good start to me!

Wishing you all the best as always.

Please feel free to contact us directly at joshua@joshuastern.ca and your comments and support are always needed.