“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. it is the source of all true art and science. he to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed.” – Einstein

This article is dedicated to the very bored and frustrated girl in his picture, who was robbed of some of the best years of her life.

This is me lost in wonder at school on “Settlers Day” (invade + take-people’s-sh%t-with-brutality-and-fancy-documentation-day). I’m proud to say that yes, although you cannot really tell from this angle… I wore my famous Fremantle markets 1990s rainbow sequin shoes to rebel and keep things interesting.

Clearly not the slight bit interested in what my principle had to say. The boy in green behind me, David, he had a short attention span too. I feel this picture really summarises my primary school experience. I Love to learn and socialise, but deep down I couldn’t help but feel school was a diabolical crime. A ridiculous and unfair waste of my time, traumatic to my self-esteem and a complete f%ckery to my value system.

Allow me to explain.

When I look out into the world and watch how people no longer seem to be motivated to ask their own questions and instead, feel a sense of duty and honour in following what they are told to do without question, I can’t help but wonder… what happened to people’s curiosity? To our innate sense of holy wonder…

It’s not a secret that the experiences we have in the first seven years of our lives shape our core personality, behavioural patterns and belief systems, and I can’t help but wonder (there’s my favourite word again) are our school systems to blame for the lack of wonder I see in our society?

The mainstream education system we have in place today was developed during the industrial revolution. At that time, what the world seemed to need was factory workers who understood basic Maths and English. So the school system was literally set up to prepare them for factory life (hence the bells for lunch and recess breaks), and taught them to value maths and sciences above the arts as “more important”.

Today the world needs very different things than what it did back then and yet our school system has barely changed.

Based on research conducted by Growing Leaders, education that has a meaningful and lasting impact on it’s students usually has these elements:

1. A healthy, trusting relationship with the teacher
2. An interactive learning community (children are more interested in people than things)
3. Creativity and innovation that stimulates the “right-brain”

I don’t know about you but I definitely did not that a healthy trusting relationship with most of my teachers, in fact, I remember being really scared of most of them. But I will admit that the ones who I did have a good relationship with, were usually the classes I excelled in (Jane Fellows I will never forget you!)

As for an interactive learning environment, well.. does being forced to learn things you have no little or no interest in (and at some times literally put you to sleep it’s so goddamn boring) count as an interactive learning environment? I doubt it.

“When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.” ― John Taylor Gatto

We are taught to associate intelligence with the memorisation of facts, rather than seeing intelligence as a full body experience. There are many different types of learning styles, and some people literally need to move to think/learn.

Our educational model is designed to lecture, drill and test. Children are forced to sit unnaturally sit in chairs all day and told to answer the questions given to them, rather than inspired to ask questions that are actually meaningful to them.

Forced to mindlessly memorise facts they will likely never add value to their lives, children soon lose interest and begin to switch off. And they being to lose the power of their most precious asset, their imagination. They begin to lose their sacred sense of wonder and curiosity.

Schools Destroy Our Sense of Wonder

As Albert Einstein once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." This is because knowledge is finite, whereas the imagination can take a person into the infinite. Knowledge includes only what has been already developed, whilst the imagination is about our dreams, which have no limits.

The latest discoveries in science are now proving that our thoughts are incredibly powerful, and literally create our reality. Thoughts are not just insignificant vibrations happening incased within your mind, they ripple out and affect everything around you. Literally attracting to you the things that are a vibrational match to the frequency you are sending out. So when you really think about it, it is a tragedy that because of the way schools are run, children’s imaginations are literally being put to sleep.

We live in an incredible and amazing world, full of infinite potential, and children know this innately. But as they go through their school experience, they begin to think that life is boring and many choose to opt out and take refuge in lala land. Our schools are training children to switch off rather than be sharp thinkers.

I have an extremely vivid imagination and creative mind, and although I love learning, I was so bored in school that I began completing zoning out, for whilst the teacher was probably talking about maths, I wouldn’t hear a world because I was far gone in Libbyland, hanging out with the fairies. I’d rock up to school on a Monday and be in shock there was a test and everyone knew about but me. I was so bored in school I could barely stay present for more than a few minutes.

Some might label me with attention deficit disorder and put me on pills. I call it being bored AF. Being raised by Disney and Hollywood did help me to return to Earth either. It’s literally taken me until my mid thirties finally to finally remember what I knew in my heart when I was five: the world is magical and full of possibility. It’s taken me most of my life to finally truly want to come back to Earth and be present and engaged with it.

Schools Put Us Off Learning

As a result of the pain we experience in school, such as boredom, fear, confusion and embarrassment, many people become put off learning altogether. They begin to see education as something that they must force and discipline themselves to do. But really, learning should be fun and inspiring. It should be so exciting and inspiring to us that it brings us back into the here and now.

The sad part is that this drill and test education model is so unnecessary, for children are naturally curious and industrious, it’s not in their nature to sit around doing nothing; they are always busy and curious and following their little hearts without question. But tragically, by the time they graduate high school, most of them have lost their curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and in some cases, their excitement for life.

Imagine a world where we all gave value to what lights us up the most, rather than organizing subjects into a hierarchy dictated to us… 

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”– Howard Washington Thurman

Think about it this way, it is utterly outrageous that a student should spent twelve years of their life in school and still not be able to answer the most important and basic questions when they graduate, such as, 'who am I as an individual and what lights me up the most?'. I know I certainly couldn’t answer these questions upon my graduation. All I knew was that I was angry and ready to partay.

“Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open” - Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With Wolves

Schools Teach Us To Be Afraid Of Making Mistakes

Children are naturally brave and aren't afraid to participate and try new things, and that is how they discover what they like and what they don't like. But sadly, because of the way schools stigmatise mistakes, children soon become scared to make mistakes. Which is nothing short of a tragedy, for if you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original. We are educating people out of their creative capacities.

Schools Disconnect Us From Our Bodies

Children are innately connected to their feelings and sense of self, for it through experimentation and trial and era, that they begin to figure out their preferences. In other words, children are still connected to their innate sense of self because they work with the simplicity of their feelings: if something feels good, they do it, if it feels bad, they don't.

Forcing children to sit still in chairs all day long is not only an unnatural torture, it literally disconnects them from our bodies, for in order to survive such cruel conditions, they learn to disconnect and disassociate themselves from their bodies (“fidgeting” is a sign you need to move!). In other words, they learn to ignore the wisdom of their bodies and become disconnect from their innate feeling-based navigation system, which is vital for navigating life and making decision’s that take them in the direction of what actually makes them feel good.

Not to mention, restricting our movements literally restricts the flow of our life force energy, reducing our sense of vitality and creating physical and energetic blocks in the body, which if left unchecked, can manifest as disease (dis-ease) in the body. Hence we live in a world full sick and over-weight people who live almost entirely in their minds and think of their bodies as just mere transport for their heads, who view their feelings more as inconveniences rather than as their innate wisdom trying to communicate with them.

Schools Teach Us To Obey Authority

Having no freedom to choose what we want to learn and only answer the questions given to us also trains us to rely on outside “authorities” to us the answers to life’s questions, training us to blindly follow orders without questioning authority. Schools literally train us to obey authority, for we are humiliated and punished if we dare question the information given to us, and are made to think that it’s normal to rely on outside forces to tell us something is true, rather than investigating things for ourselves.

Schools Waste Our Precious Time

Of the vast ocean of information that exists in this world, which you think critically, can you truly say that the things we are taught in school are actually setting us up to thrive?

What about giving our children rights and teaching them from a young age to be responsible. What about the importance of innovation, kindness, creativity and critical thinking. How about basic psychology, communication and relationship skills, emotional intelligence, sustainable farming and basic life survival skills, preventative medicine, true nutrition, meditation, the law and your basic human rights, money management, how our financial system and government work, who the various political parties are and what they stand for?

"If every child in the world was taught meditation, you will eliminate violence within one generation" - Dalai Lama

But no. We are still forcing the young minds of today to learn mostly pointless things such as complicated mathematics, war, the periodic table, as well as selected books and versions of history.

One must surely wonder if we are having our time wasted on purpose? And who on Earth is choosing the content taught in mainstream schools? One must ask, are we not only having our time wasted with irrelevant information, but literally having propaganda shoved down our throats?

“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?” ― Dan Brown

Schools Kill Creativity

Creativity is having original ideas that have value. As Picasso said, all children are born artists, but sadly, they get educated out of their creativity since they are not taught to value it, they forget how to access it.

The left-brain is calculated and definitive, and is about facts. The right-brain is innovative and dynamic, and is about creativity. Both are necessary. Yet every education system in the world has the same hierarchy of subjects that teaches us to value left brain modalities above the right brain modalities, even though our world is increasingly becoming driven by right-brain thought. Why are we are preparing students in left-brain schools to enter a right-brain world?

 “My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status” – Sir Ken Robinson

Maya Angelou wrote, “We are all creative, but by the time we are three or four years old, someone has knocked the creativity out of us. Some people shut up the kids who start to tell stories. Kids dance in their cribs, but someone will insist they sit still. By the time the creative people are ten or twelve, they want to be like everyone else.”

Schools Destroy Individuality

When we are encouraged to fit in rather than differentiate ourselves, we learn to trade our authenticity for approval.

We are led to believe school uniforms create an identity for the school and give students a sense of belonging. We are also told that they “increase self-discipline, minimize economic and social class barriers, reduce the risk of bullying and take off the pressure off figuring out what to wear.”

Do you ever see young children having lots of trouble making their mind up about what to wear? Of course not. As I said earlier, children are still innately connected to their feelings: they don’t over-think things – the just do that feels good. Expressing our individuality through how we style ourselves is our birthright, and should not be taken away from children. Uniforms are disconnecting children from their sense of personal identity. 

Of course creating a sense of unity and community is important, but uniforms don’t do this. Look at all the tribes around the world… do they were uniforms? No. Are they unified? Yes. Take a look at our society where we are forced to wear uniforms: do most citizens really feel a sense of community and unity? Hello no. When I go into public places, I don’t feel a sense of unity at all, I feel like I’m walking through a minefield of judgement, depression, competition and at times, hostility.

Uniforms are about control, compliance and stripping of us our right to express ourselves freely as individuals.

The claim that “uniforms improve learning by reducing distraction, sharpening focus on schoolwork and making the classroom a more serious environment, allowing students to perform better academically”, is utterly ridiculous.  Take Finland for example: their students have the highest academic record in the world, and they only go to school for 3 hours a day, have no homework and do NOT wear uniforms - they just wear what they feel comfortable in.

Perhaps the real reason most children are having trouble focusing is because they have been stripped of their rights to move freely, breathe fresh air, wear what they want and are being forced to learning things that are boring and irrelevant. Perhaps being able to spend more time outside in the fresh air is critical to their development. Perhaps children shouldn’t be treated like idiots and deserve to have a say in what they wish to spend their time and energy learning about, and at the very least, how they wish to dress themselves.

Grades Harm Children’s Self Worth

The grading system we currently have in place was originally designed so that we could differentiate between those that are "special needs" and those that are "normal". It was never intended to be a measurement of intelligence. So the grades you get in school actually in no way reflect how "intelligent" and "competent" you are.

Grading children against each other and expecting them all the measure up to a rigid, outdated and biased set of standards, when all children learn in unique ways and contain unique gifts is not only illogically, is can also be devastating to children’s sense of self-worth and affect them for the rest of their lives. 

Our school system is encouraging competition and hierarchy, rather than teamwork, collaboration and equality.

Wouldn’t it be healthier, fairer and less damaging to teach children to strive to be better than they were yesterday, rather than to be better than their friends?

"Modern education is competitive, nationalistic and separative. It has trained the child to regard material values as of major importance, to believe that his nation is also of major importance and superior to other nations and peoples. The general level of world information is high but usually biased, influenced by national prejudices, serving to make us citizens of our nation but not of the world." – Einstein

Schools Divide Us & Encourage Bullying

By being robbed of our rights to express ourselves and forced to be the same as everybody else, means that we begin to view individuality as something to judge rather than appreciate. Hence many students become judgmental and even jealous of those who do dare to stand out and differentiate themselves, and they become a targets for criticism and bullying.

“to be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing its very best to make you just like everybody else… is to fight the greatest battle you’ll ever fight.. and keep fighting it.” - E E Cummings

Perhaps this is part of the reason why our schools are rampant with bullies, because our schools themselves are literally breeding grounds for competition, jealousy, judgement and anger.

I sometimes wonder if so many of us are so traumatised from our school experiences and the feelings we had to push down and sweep under the rug every damn day, that as a result, we then spend the rest of their lives trying to keep ourselves distracted with television, work, games, etc, and numb/sedated with alcohol, drugs and excessive heavy foods, so that we never have to think about it again.

 

Conclusion

The mainstream school system is a streamlined brainwashing program that transforms bright, brave, curious, self-motivated, enthusiastic, creative and effortlessly themselves six year olds into insecure, socially awkward and inexperienced order followers who are completely unequipped for real life, and to top it off, we paid for it.

Deeply confused about who they are or what they even want to do with their lives, their corrupted education has shaped the way they view the world, changing it from a magical and mysterious wonderland of limitless potential, to an unfair, painful and small little box they must squeeze themselves into to try and survive in. A box that will be near impossible to get out of without the very tools their education robbed them off: their imagination, creativity and sense of wonder.

Meanwhile their parent’s are too time poor and over-worked to even realise it is happening, for they themselves were also robbed of their ability to question the status quo, think critically and truly wonder. They too switched off long ago and have become very cozy living their lives in fantasy land.

Where to from here?

1. Let Your Children Educate You

Believe it or not, the most advanced humans on this planet’s are our children.

It is our children who will show us how to reconnect back to the genius of the heart. If we stop treating them like as our inferiors, start truly listening to them and observing them, they will teach us how to play again. They will bring us back into the power and simply joy of the present moment. They will show us how to stop taking life so seriously.

2. Honour Your Inner Child’s Lost Dreams

Imagine what you would have spent your childhood doing had you been allowed to follow your highest joys and decide what you wanted to learned. Go and do that now! In honour of your inner child’s forgotten dreams and passions, for it’s never too late to follow your heart/joy…

3. Visualise a Better World (Your Imagination is Powerful)

Imagine a world where children were treated as equals and with absolute respect, and told that they are already whole, complete and amazing just as they are. That all they need to do is follow their good feelings, do what lights them up and makes them feel amazing, so they can develop their innate gifts and share them with the world.

Imagine a world where children were encouraged to be themselves, rather than give up with unique truth so they can “fit in” with everybody else.

Imagine a world free of judgment and fear of failure, where mistakes were only seen as necessary lessons.

Imagine a world where the teacher’s role was not to grade, discipline and order the children around, but instead act like a guide and support.

Imagine a world where children are encouraged to dance rather than being told off for fidgeting.

Imagine a world where children are not punished for laughing or talking with their friends, but instead encouraged to communicate and enjoy themselves.

4. Give Your Children & Yourself a Real Education

You may want to consider homeschooling your children or sending them to an independent school like Steiner or Montessori. You may even feel inspired enough to demand education reform.

Another option you have is to join Wonder Club and give our lessons a try! Our education programs were built to truly serve you and provide you with valuable tools that will last a lifetime.

From the heart, Elisabeth x

Creator of Wonder Club