Posts tagged unlearning

Have you ever heard that our education system is out-dated? I’m sure you have. This is something that bothers me.

Our standard education system is not just out-dated. It’s harmful. Before going to school, children are creative, alive– they want to explore the world, they want to try things, they are free inside. How do they act and feel after graduating secondary and high schools?

We all know the answer.

Children are smart and creative. Adults usually aren’t.

We look for rules to follow, because it’s easier. We are full of fears, and we only talk about creativity. We were taught to follow the rules, by other adults who were also full of fear, trained by the same system. And after graduating, the majority of us became factory workers, whatever that factory looks like: bank, web agency, non-profit organization, whatever.

What do we remember from the school times?

I can tell a little what I remember:

• School was so boring! You had to learn things that you knew you would never use in the future, because everything would be completely forgotten in 10 years (only the broken spirit will remain for the whole lifetime).
• School was something in conflict with our nature: we wanted to think, we wanted to create, we wanted to be free, we wanted to build things, and we wanted to explore the world, that’s for sure. But all we got was limited/standardized information and lots of rules to follow!
• At school you were forced to follow the rules, again. When you refused to follow the rules, you got a bad mark or you had lots of other problems.
• At school you were forced to work alone. If during the lesson or exam you wanted to solve a problem in group or you wanted to help others, or ask others for help, you were punished. Everyone involved was punished.

For more than 100 years, the education system was built to make factory workers out of us. And we are not factory workers, that’s for sure. For the last hundreds of thousands of years, humans were free and smart creatures, exploring the world, creating some joy and magic.

Now our economy has changed again, and if you want to achieve something great, you have to unlearn everything you have learned at school. Everything!

Here are a few ways of reinventing ourselves:

• When you do something, do it for society and for yourself.
• Stop following the rules. Filter, change or eliminate them, so that you and society gain the most value and joy from the daily life.
• Become a child again. Explore the world, touch everything, try new things, follow your intuition, and smile a lot.
• Work in groups! We must learn to work in groups again and unlearn being alone. Group work is the best way to achieve results in less time, and also the best way to have joy, and grow inside.
• Learn being creative again, because we were taught to be mediocre. Mediocre people are easy to manage by giving rules to follow, but at the same time they are like zombies, and our society is dying because of our mediocrity. Let’s become creative and invent new things, new lifestyle, and a new, better world.