From ... in Alternative News — Nov 3, 2018

The Inherent Problem With Mainstream Education & How It Keeps The World STUCK

The Oxford dictionary defines education as “the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university”, but is it only in academic institutions that we are given systematic instruction on what to believe? In the news, for example, we are systematically taught all about the world’s problems. We are of course also told that governments are working to fix them; yet climate change, war, poverty and environmental destruction keep increasing. Meanwhile, the advertisements in newspapers, on TV, online, and billboards across the world, constantly teach us that we are here to keep buying and consuming. Consumerism, the message goes, will make us happy and create a healthy economy at the same time; yet mental and physical illness is at epidemic proportions, while the world’s economies are in ever-increasing debt.

The mainstream media, then, also fits this description of education, and we are being educated all the time that our purpose is to earn money, consume, and let those in charge sort out our future.

Then we share that message with the people around us, and pass on that information to our children. Meanwhile, scientists have now set the doomsday clock at 2 minutes to midnight with the growing nuclear threat, climate change, and a lack of trust in political institutions are three main reasons for this decision. All this leaves us feeling anxious, helpless, even depressed – like there is nothing much we can do. According to Harvard Medical School, “With headlines warning us of international terrorism, global warming, and economic uncertainty, we’re all likely to be a little more anxious these days. As an everyday emotion, anxiety — the ‘fight or flight’ response — can be a good thing, prompting us to take extra precautions. But when anxiety persists in the absence of a need to fight or flee, it can not only interfere with our daily lives but also undermine our physical health.” Studies, they explain, show that prolonged anxiety is linked to the development of chronic respiratory disorders (such as asthma), gastrointestinal disorders (such as IBS), migraines, and even heart disease. In his 2013 Tedx talk, clinical psychologist Dr. Stephen Llardi presents his findings that by the time today’s youngest Americans are in their mid-twenties, 25% will be depressed, explaining: “For many Americans, Europeans and people throughout the Western world, the stress response goes on for weeks and months and even years at a time, and when it does that, it’s incredibly toxic.

The result: an epidemic of depressive illness.” More recently, in 2016, The Rotman Research Institute (RRI) discovered that being subjected to chronic stress and anxiety increases the risk of “structural degeneration and impaired functioning of the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which may account for the increased risk of developing neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression and dementia.” The mainstream narrative of fear and problems, studies show, is a story that prolongs the activation of the physiological stress response, causing a chronic pathological state that is wreaking havoc on our metabolic, neurological, cardiovascular and immune systems. During the years I have spent teaching The Art of Critical Thinking (and developing WUWE), I have come to realize two things: critical thinking is not always a skill that is actively encouraged in mainstream academic institutions – often because “it is too political” – and when it is taught, people are often taught to “have an open mind” and “think out of the box” within the confines of the current mainstream narrative. First, almost every important topic today is political: poverty, food security, climate change, sweat shops, social benefits, privatisation, refugees, war, Donald Trump – we all have opinions about these topics – but if we do not look at the facts surrounding these topics, we cannot formulate and act on informed opinions based on truth. Second, in order to think out of the box, we need to look at that other side of the argument which is not the mainstream narrative, not our conditioning, or as R. Buckminster Fuller said: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Schools, after all, are supposed to be places where we prepare new generations for a positive future in today’s world.

The problem is that despite all we know about the world we live in, the mainstream narrative is still that a positive future, or ‘success’, just means fitting into the current story by getting a well-paid job. Consequently, teachers usually have no choice but to teach an academic curriculum that covers some problems we face in the world, such as the consequences of climate change, but covers very little about how the current industrial growth society we live in today is causing these problems and even less about what we can do, and what is happening now, to change it. This is the case in academic institutions the world over, and it is not surprising. Academics agree that the conventional (mainstream) curriculum is outdated and designed to prepare us to go into the workforce and contribute to a failing system which, we all know, is rapidly destroying the planet and us. My experience teaching in the primary, secondary and higher education sectors worldwide for almost 20 years tells me teachers and students are interested in an alternative, positive way of looking at the world to this fear-based, problems-focused narrative we are presented with, but mainstream education simply does not allow for it.

The mainstream narrative is just that – a story we are all educated to accept as truth. Author, scholar and environmental activist Joanna Macy states in the film Planetary: “There are three stories actually.” “The first story,” she says “is business as usual. All we need to do is grow our economy,” and then “there’s another story, which is seen and accepted as the reality by the scientists, the activists: when I lift back the carpet, look under the rug of the business as usual and see what it’s costing us. It’s costing us the world.” She goes on to say “That’s not the end of the story though because there’s another narrative” and that is “that a revolution is taking place. A transition.” She calls this story “The great turning.” So is it possible that we are in the midst of a solutions revolution right now, and the only problem is that we learn next to nothing about this alternative, exciting solutions-focused reality in the institutions that provide our education? In the following Trews-style presentation I begin answering this question by looking at the first two narratives – “business as usual” and “what it’s costing us” – and demonstrate that no matter what the conclusion, when we follow the reality given to us in the mainstream narrative, the outcome ends up with increased doom and gloom.

The solution, then, is to shift our focus away from the mainstream narrative towards the third story, the solutions-focused narrative, and participate in that story instead. .

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The Inherent Problem With Mainstream Education & How It Keeps The World STUCK

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